Spenser's English Rivers. 95 



Urbs insignis erat Verolamia, plus operosse 



Arti, naturae debuit ilia minus. 

 Pendragon Arturi patris hsec obsessa laborem 



Septennem sprevit cive superba suo.°'' 



But long ere this, Bunduca Britonnesse 



Her mightie hoast against my bulwarkes brought, 



Bunduca, that victorious conqueresse, 



That, lifting up her brave heroick thought 



Bove womens weaknes, with the Romanes fought. 



Fought, and in field against them thrice prevailed : 



Yet was she foyld, when as she me assailed.'' 



Both Holinshed and Camden may have lent matter to this 

 passage. HoHnshed describes two victories of Bonduca over 

 the Romans (Bk. 4^ chap. 12), one at Camelodunum, and men- 

 tions the fall of Verulam at the hands of the Britons. Camden 

 says of her expressly: 'Camaloduntim Coloniam, et Verolamium 

 mmiicipium excidit' (1590, p. 355). Perhaps Spenser has these 

 three victories in mind when he says that Bonduca 'thrice pre- 

 vailed.' Yet in the last line he speaks of her being foiled at 

 Verulam. For this I find no authority. In F. Q. II. x. 44 she is 

 said to have been finally defeated at the Severn. But for this 

 statement, also, Dr. Harper finds no corroboration.^^ The phrase, 

 'lifting up her brave heroick thought Bove womens weaknes,' 

 may owe something to the exalted plea to defend their freedom 

 that Bonduca makes to her army in a 'gallant oration' which 

 constitutes Holinshed's eleventh chapter. 



In lines 113-9 Spenser speaks of the conquest of Verulam by 

 the Saxons, bought with much bloodshed and the death of their 

 general, whose monument, long a wonder, is now lost. Neither 

 Camden nor Holinshed, nor any other I have seen, speaks of this. 

 Holinshed, in his account of Eldred's excavations, says inciden- 

 tally that Verulam had now been 'overthrowne by the furie 

 of the Saxons and Danes.' Camden writes : 'Not long after 

 [the year 429], the English-Saxons wonne it: but Uther the 

 Britan, surnamed for his serpentine wisedom Pendragon, by a 

 sore siege and a long [cf. above, p. 94], recovered it. After 



"'From Neckam's De Laudibus Divinae Sapientice, 5. 859-64, ed. T. 

 Wright, Rolls Series, No. 34. 

 "LI. 106-12. 

 ^Sources of the British Chronicle History, etc., p. 119. 



