Boedicea (Boudicca) Queen of The Iceni: England Defiant

Boedicea, also known as Boudicca, is a woman, whose image astride a chariot, spear in hand, has come to represent English defiance in times of peril and danger. Whenever England is in peril we evoke memories of this woman, of whom we know so little, and her rebellion against the mighty Roman Empire. Scourged and humiliated she would have her revenge, in a man’s world she would not be intimidated, and against the odds she remained defiant. 

Boedicea was married to Prasutagus, the King of the Iceni tribe of East Anglia. When in AD 43, the Romans conquered southern England, Prasutagus was a willing collaborator and for his cooperation he was permitted to retain his Kingdom. Prior to his death Prasutagus, had made a will in which he divided his property half of which would be retained by his family, the other half would go to the Roman Emperor Nero. As the Roman historian Cassius Dio explained, “Prasutagus, the late King of the Icenians, in the course of a long reign had amassed considerable wealth. By his will he left the whole to his two daughters and the Emperor in equal shares, conceiving, by that stroke of policy, that he should provide at once for the tranquility of his family and Kingdom.” If that is indeed what he thought then he was to be sorely disappointed. Yet there was no reason to believe that his wife, and the new Queen of the Iceni, would be any less compliant than her husband had been. But the Romans had interpreted the late Presutagus’s will differently. As far as they were concerned upon his death his Kingdom died with him, and all that had belonged to the Iceni now belonged to them. The fact that they now had a woman in charge was merely a sign of their weakness. The Roman Governor of Britain Paulinus Seutonius, a brutal, insensitive, bloody-minded man with pretensions, arrived to claim what he now believed was his. When Boedicea complained she was bound, beaten and whipped. Her two daughters were then publicly raped, and other members of the royal family sold into slavery. Satisfied that he had nipped in the bud any recalcitrance on the part of the tribes, Seutonius now took the best part of the Roman army and departed for north Wales to continue his work of suppressing Celtic culture and religion throughout the Island of Britain.