Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/326

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK have been observed w^hich distinguished them as the currency of an inde- pendent tribe/ We have another interesting trace of this ancient British tribe in the name Icknield Street (anciently Icenhilde Weg),a road w^hich, in pre-Roman as well as Roman times, connected the southern and central parts of the kingdom with the territory of the Iceni. Tacitus and Ptolemy, among classical writers, described the Iceni under different designations, and furnish very little definite information as to the extent of the tribe, or the names of its princes or rulers ; but here again we get a little light from such numismatic evidence as is available. The inscriptions antd and anted on ancient British coins are believed to be, contractions for Antedrigus, which, there is reason to suppose, was the name of a prince who originally ruled over the Iceni until the defeat of that tribe, about A.D. 50, by the Romans under the leadership of Ostorius, Coins bearing the inscriptions just given have been found in the west of Britain, and it seems probable that Antedrigus became a prince there, either over some remnant of his people who accompanied him in his flight to the west, or by election over a native British tribe in that district. A map of England, marked in such a way as to show the distribution of the various types of ancient British coins, affords ample confirmation of the fact that the tribes inhabiting what was afterwards known as East Anglia were severed from the rest of Britain by something more than mere distance. The predominance of purely local coins over coins from other, but not very distant, districts is, however, shown more clearly in the contents of hoards found at Freckenham and Santon Downham. In the former hoard about ninety coins of rather base gold were found in an earthen pot buried in the soil. The Santon Downham hoard, which was found in 1869, contained 109 coins. Of these twelve bore the inscription ecen ; nineteen the inscription ECE ; four the inscription aesv ; fourteen the inscription anted ; twenty-nine did not show their legends ; the same number (twenty-nine) were uninscribed ; and two were coins of Roman date and make. The identity of the prince or other person or even town represented by the inscription aesv has not been clearly determined. Sir John Evans suggested that it indicated either Asutagus,^ or else some British town of the Iceni.' But the preponderance of coins either (i) bearing legends which may be regarded as indicating the tribe and one of the princes of the Iceni, or (2) of types which are known to be characteristic of this district, is remarkable. Numerous individual coins found separately in different parts of Suffolk may also be assigned to the Iceni, either on the ground of inscription or likeness of type. The precise localities are given in the topographical list at the end of this article. One interesting coin was found at Newinarket bearing an inscription of Addedomaros, a prince whose dominions probably either joined those of Cunobelinus, or were included within them. We should naturally expect to see in the ancient coinage of Suffolk definite traces of the influence of Cunobelinus, a powerful and famous ruler Evans, Anct. Brit. Coins, 375. ' Numis. Chron. (new ser.), ix, 326. ' And. Brit. Coins, 386.