There, four years’ excavation (1922—5)
produced the huge total of 11,492 coins struck by the
house of Theodosius (about A.D. 383—95), and this
total has. since been immensely increased. Even if we try to
explain away a proportion of these late coins by supposing that
some of them may represent hoards which have been accidentally
dispersed by farmers or stone-seekers in the top soil—a
supposition entirely unsupported by evidence—it is clear at
once that we are faced at Richborough with a very special
numismatic problem.. The minting of official bronze coinage
ceased or markedly diminished in the West after A.D. 395. So
far as coinage was thereafter used, the old currency had now to
serve with little or no recruitment. On any site in Britain,
therefore, which was occupied intensively after that date, we
might expect to find an accumulation of Theodosian coinage,
supplemented by the more or less barbaric products of local
mints. That we should find such an accumulation at Richborough
is in accordance with general probability. Out of the immediate
reach of the destructive Picts and Scots, and in close contact
with civilized Gaul, the more strongly fortified sites of
south-eastern Britain might be expected to hold out, at any rate
for a time, as bulwarks of Romano-British urban civilization
against the immigrant yeomen of Teutonic Europe. Verulam, we
know, was still a substantial Romano-British city when St.
German was received there in 429. And it may be found that, when
the careful excavation of Verulam enables us to appraise more
accurately the evidence of the Theodosian coinage, we shall be
able with some confidence to affirm that Richborough, too, was.
inhabited for some decades after the break with Rome in A.D.
410. There, until Verulam—our one and only historic site of
the fifth century—is explored on an adequate scale, we may
leave this primary problem of the Richborough coinage.55
Of the many secondary problems we need not here take
account.
Such are, in outline, the surviving remains of
Roman Richborough. There is, fortunately, no doubt of its Roman
name. Its position suits that assigned to Rutupiae by Ptolemy,
the Antonine Itinerary, and the Peutinger map (P1. VI). Its
fourth—century fort suits the statement of the ‘ Notitia ‘
that Rutupiae formed part of the Saxon-Shore defence. Its
harbour suits the often— mentioned Portus Rutupinus. Its name
may be traced continuously since the days when Bede could tell
us of his own knowledge both the old name and the new, and
explain that Rutubi was now called Reptaceastir by the English.
The identity of Richborough and Rutupiae was indeed perceived by
the earliest writers on Romano-British topography, Servetus,
Lhuyd, Talbot; and apart from some natural confusion between
Richborough and the neighbouring Sandwich, it has never been
seriously disputed.56
Rutupiae is mentioned in Roman literature far
oftener than most sites in Britain. The references seem to fall
into two groups: those in the poets and those in the prose
writers and roadbooks. The poets—Lucan in the middle of
55 The problem is
of course complicated by our ignorance of the density of the
population which made use of Richborough at the end of the
fourth century. A short period of unparalleled congestion there
would produce much the same result, numismatically, as a
prolonged period of normal occupation. The whole question,
indeed, bristles with difficulties.
56 John
Twyne in his De Rebus Allbionicis (1590, p. 50), Leland
in his Collectanea (iii, 11i) and some contemporary
antiquaries of Dover put Rutupiae at Dover; Jovius put it at
Canterbury. Later, some have thought that both Reculver and
Richborough bore the name Rutupiae (so Battely), or that
Richborough was only Portus Rutupinus and Rutupiae itself was
Canterbury (so Douglas and Boys). Such ideas need no criticism
here. |