A GLOSSARY

A few useful notes:

Jesus was not born in England, he was born in Nazareth, which is not in the Cotswolds. It rarely snows in Nazareth. This has led to a lot of confusion.
The first Romans who came to England were not Christian. The next ones were. ‘Roman baths’ and ‘Roman soldiers’ came first, and then, after a respectful break, ‘Roman Catholics’.
The word catholic means ‘embracing of a wide variety of things’. So in the Protestant Apostolic Creed, the speaker states allegiance to the ‘catholic’ church. Another confusing thing. Because as we know, Protestants and Catholics do not get on, historically. Look out for capital letters. When there is a capital C, it means the Catholic Church. This is the similar to Conservative and conservative - or Romantic and romantic.
BC means Before Christ and AD means Anno Domini (trans. in the year of our lord). BCE means before Christian Era and CE means Christian Era. As in, ‘can we stop saying in the year of our lord cos it’s not our lord please’. Using BCE is a bit more inclusive, a bit more catholic, if you like. So BCE/CE is either woke or catholic, depending on your perspective.

Good. Off we go.

Druids

The oldest detailed written down description of British Druidic life comes from Julius Caesar’s book ‘the Gallic war’. After this, we also have documentation of the Druidic peoples from Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Lucan & Cicero. Lucan tells us that Druids were extremely spooky and he called their rites ‘hateful’. This is a classic case of history being written by the victors. Which is not to say that everything the Romans wrote is untrue.
It is not impossible that the Druids sacrificed humans.
NOTE: If you are from the South of Britain, it’s very hard to know whether your ancestors were Druidic Britons or invading Romans or later Anglo Saxons or Norman invaders or a mixture of all of them put together. I certainly have no idea. All that has been lost to the annals of time.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe was used by the ancient Romans, to protect thresholds. It is a very unusual plant. The Romans tell us that the Druids loved Mistletoe too, which is a funny coincidence. Pliny the Elder (circa 77CE) tells us that British Druids worshipped the Mistletoe and the Oak wearing white cloaks, and that they sacrificed white bulls, just like in Cretan tradition which is also a funny coincidence. In the study of history, a funny coincidence might suggest shared human curiosities across the world, or it might signal absolute nonsense. It’s true that mistletoe is simply a very unusual plant, in that it grows mid-air. So the question is this - did the Romans find that the Druids shared their love of mistletoe because mistletoe is inherently weird… or not?

The Great Snuffing

Over the first couple of centuries of the Romans in Britain, Druids were snuffed. Romans integrated aspects of some pagan Celtic beliefs but they snuffed out the Druids, because they were too political. And also of course, the Druids were barbaric, engaging in human sacrifice etc.
So it was that on the rocky road to British Christianity, it was the Druids who were pushed into the ditches.
Their final stronghold was on the island of Ynys Môn (Anglesey). Governor Suetonius Paulinus attacked the island and, despite the fearsome sight of the long haired wild women with flaming torches, the Romans managed to massacre them all - man, woman and child. Tacitus goes on to explains how they destroyed the nemeta - the sacred oak groves ‘devoted to inhuman superstitions’.
Druidic practise continued here and there for a while, but seeing at it was an oral religion, the snuffing of Ynys Môn was very effective and the Romans were able to establish their own Mediterranean-style religion. The Druids disappear from written record in the second century CE.
Note on Trees: After a while, the Romans decided to believe in one god, the father almighty. But it turns out that they still liked destroying sacred trees. In 723 CE, St Boniface went to Germany and chopped down Donar’s Sacred Oak simply to prove that his one God was the true god. Unfortunately, it also proved that his one God was a jealous God.
Nineteenth Century Revival: In the nineteenth century, there was a revival of interest in Druidic customs, particularly things like how these ancient priests used to gather mistletoe from the sacred oak. These ancient British rites became a popular subject for art.
Note: Because of the great snuffing, we really don’t have much to go on when it comes to what the Druids did, so I think it’s OK to make it up.

Rome

The confusing thing about “Rome'“ is that it is both the Romans who were absolutely not Christian, who persecuted and crucified many of them and fed them to animals for entertainment - and the later Romans who were extremely Christian. The Romans, from a religious historical perspective, have had their cake and eaten it.
So when the Romans first arrived in Britain, they did not come with the Cross, except as a method of punishment. No. They came with Mars, with Jupiter and with Minerva. The Gods they had borrowed from the Greeks. The Roman Empire was smart, so they integrated local gods - in this case, Celtic gods. This is known as Synthecism. Sulis Minerva is a good example of a synthetic god. The Druids did not want to synthecise, leading to the snuffing, and these people disappearing from written record in the 2nd Century CE.
During these early years of Roman rule, other religions from the Empire also appeared, such as Mithraism, the cult of Isis, and a few other sects, such as Christianity.
By 380 CE, Rome itself had been seduced by the boy from Nazareth, and they too decided to become Christian. What a turnaround. But just as Nicene Christianity was establishing itself as the religion of Empire, Roman rule in Britain started to crumble. A few decades later, they withdrew taking their red wine and their funny Christian ways.

The Anglo Saxons Arrive

Almost as soon as the dust had settled from the hasty withdrawal of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons (and the Jutes) arrived from Germany (and Jutland). Many had come as mercenaries with the Roman army and had, apparently, seen what a lovely little island Britain was, and so they went home, told all their Anglo, Saxon (and Jute) friends about it and came back with their friends and family.
Anglo-Saxon language and culture soon overtook the remnants of Latin and native Celtic language and culture. Anglo-Saxon Gods are a bit more fun than monotheism, which definitely helped. They are most famous for having a day of the week each: Tiw (God of War), Woden (God of War), Thor (God of Storm), Frige (Goddess of Prophecy). The Anglo Saxons gave the Britons, stripped of the Druidic past, a new National identity. And that identity holds in place, even to this day. Boewulf being thought of as a foundational national myth.

St Augustine The Missionary

The Romans, meanwhile, were becoming really really Christian. And with it, they were discovering a way of forging a new kind of Empire. And they still had dreams of conquering that pesky little island that had proven to be so rainy and troublesome to them in the past. By 597 CE, they were ready.
Pope Gregory the Great was in charge. He is mostly known for his contribution to music, in the form of the ‘Gregorian’ chant, but he is also known for establishing Christianity in Britain. This time, for good. He send Augustian (a prior of a Roman monastery) to England, to speak with an English Pagan King whose name was Æthelberht, King of Wessex. Æthelberht’s wife, Bertha, was Christian, so Gregory thought that he was a good bet for conversion. Augustine landed in Thanet, off the coast of Kent, with some other Christian friends, and he sent a message to Æthelberht to ask if they could meet. Æthelberht said yes, as long as it was outside (he was nervous that Augustine might do some Christian sorcery upon him). Anyway, they met, and Bertha came along, and the long and the short of it is that Æthelberht converted and he made Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
There were remants of Christianity left over by the Romans in the West - now referred to as Celtic Christianity - a kind of synthetic religion. But this was not the same as Augustine Christianity. There was a bit of friction, as is often the way between peaceful religions. Nevertheless, Christianity stumbled forward and over the course of the 7th Century, it grew and grew. With baptisms and baths. Gregory also encouraged the British to bathe more in general. Now it’s one thing to take lots of baths in Southern Italy. It’s another thing in Norfolk in November. Still.
The last pagan king who reigned within Britain was Arwald, King of the Wihtwara people of the Isle of Wight. He was killed in 686 AD when Wessex, led by King Cædwalla, invaded the island with their God.
No more pagan kings.
No more polytheism.
We’ll be having none of that.
By the end of the seventh century, England could be described as a Christian nation.

The Normans

Then 1066. The Eleventh Century.
The Norman invasion.
William was essentially a Viking, but was also French, and he was a devout Christian. His invasion was blessed by the Pope and he founded Battle Abbey as a penance for all the Anglo-Saxons he had killed. Anyway, the Normans were more closely aligned to the Roman church and they built lots of amazing Cathedrals.

Jewish Arrivals

It is surmised that some Jewish people probably came over within the first Romans around 70CE. As soldiers, citizens or slaves. But there is no strict documentary evidence of this. The Christian martyrs Julius and Aaron of the fourth century have names which suggest Jewish origin. But no one can be sure. Anyway, things changed rapidly after 1066. William the Conqueror invited Jewish people to come (from the Netherlands, mostly) to help establish the new kingdom. They lived under protection of the crown and could travel around with the protection of the crown. And have their own legal courts. So it was that communities grew up, in cities including London, Norwich, York, Bristol and Oxford. They prospered and lived in relative harmony with the British who were now sort-of Roman Catholics with a bit of Pagan on the side.
Famously, things turned very sour for the Jewish community, during the Second Crusade (in the twelfth century). The Crusades encouraged identification of the British as Christian. A few bad harvests, the reign of terror known as The Anarchy, and the notion of this far away centre of their imposed religion, led to persecutions. And ultimately, banishment. In 1290, the Jewish people were expelled by Royal edict, ending three centuries of common living.
It was not until the years of the English republic that this was lifted, and communities once again sprung up hither thither.