ROMAN BRITAIN 55 BC to 450 AD
Julius
Caesar, the great Roman general, invaded Britain for the first time in 55 BC,
partly to gather information about the island of which so little was then known
and partly to punish the Belgae who had helped their fellow tribesmen in their
fight against the conquering Romans in Gaul, the land that is now France. He
landed in Kent with several thousand men, although the soldiers in one of his
legions had threatened to mutiny when told they were to invade the cold and
misty northern island reputed to be full of savages wilder even than the Gauls.
Strong tides prevented Caesar’s cavalry from getting ashore; so, after some
skirmishes in which the Romans took measure of the island which they were to
call Britannia, he decided to withdraw. He returned the following year; and,
although his sailors once again experienced difficulties with the treacherous
waters of the Channel and several of his ships were badly damaged as they lay
at anchor in a storm, be marched as far as Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire,
Cassivellaunus’s hill fort, which he captured after fierce fighting. He then
withdrew with hostages and prisoners, having extracted an undertaking from
Cassivellaunus and other British chieftains that they would pay an annual
tribute to Rome.
Caesar
returned to Rome with the knowledge that Britain was far from being the
primitive island of brutal tribesmen which Romans had previously imagined it to
be. It was not, however, until AD 43, after the death of the Belgic chieftain,
Cunobelinus, that the Emperor Claudius decided to incorporate it into the Roman
Empire. There was fierce resistance to the Roman legions which, having landed
at Richborough in Kent, were brought to battle by Cunobelinus’s son,
Caractacus, by the banks of the Medway river. But, brave as they were, the
Britons could not withstand the might of Rome. Defeated, Caractacus fled to
Wales where, years later, he was captured and with his family taken in chains to
Rome. After his defeat other British chieftains accepted the impossibility of
successful resistance and submitted to the Emperor. Cogidubnus, chiefof the
Regni, did so; for instance, and was duly rewarded, having Roman titles
bestowed upon him by the Emperor and accumulating great wealth.
The Iceni of East Anglia also submitted at
first; but when their chief, Prasutagus, died in about AD 60, bequeathing his
property to the Roman Empire jointly with his two daughters, his wishes were
disregarded by the Romans, who refused to accept Prasutagus’s widow, the tall,
red-haired, harsh-voiced Boudicca, as queen. When she insisted upon the
recognition of her rights and those of her family, she was flogged and her
daughters were raped. The enraged Iceni, assisted by the neighbouring tribe of
Trinovantes, swarmed down towards the Roman town of Colchester, massacred its
inhabitants, sacked the recently constructed temple and other buildings
associated with the alien Roman rule, and routed the 9th Legion which had arrived
from Lincoln too late for the town’s defence. Then, led by Boudicca, the
Britons turned south for the Thames and within a few days their rough and
massive army was looking down upon the port of Londinium, then an undefended
trading centre whose warehouses, shops and taverns, a few of ragstone and tile
but most of wood and thatch, all lay open to attack. The destruction of the
port was swift and complete. As at Colchester, its inhabitants were massacred
and their buildings engulfed in flames. Boudicca’s triumph, however, was
short-lived. Faced by the power of a vengeful Emperor, there could be no final
victory; and, rather than fall into the hands of her enemies, she took poison
and joined the countless thousands of dead.
London was rebuilt, grew and prospered. By the middle of
the third century, when it had become the administrative as well as the
commercial capital of the Roman province of Britain, it contained perhaps as
many as 30,000 people. Fifty years later there may have been almost twice that
number, living in a semicircular area of 326 acres enclosed by three miles of
strong stone walls, pierced by gates where the main roads entered the city and
strengthened by bastions and towers. Elsewhere in Britain, as recalcitrant
tribes were gradually conquered and pushed back towards the frontiers of Wales
and Scotland, the Romans built other large towns, with temples and basilicas,
barracks and public offices, amphitheatres, baths and workshops.
Most
of these towns were arranged on the Romans’ favourite grid-like plan which can
still be recognized in the layout of the centres of Chichester (Noviomagus) and
Gloucester (Glevum). In the north was York, then known as Eboracum, originally
the headquarters of the 9th Legion. On the northern borders of the Welsh Marches
was Chester (Deva), headquarters of the 20th Legion. Other cities were
developed on the sites of old British settlements. Among these were Lincoln
(Lindum), St Albans (Verulamium) and Silchester (Calleva), whose Roman walls
still stand in places up to fourteen feet high. Other towns were developed as
spas, most notably Bath (Aquae Sulis) whose baths and temple, now fully
excavated, were revealed when the city was rebuilt during its
eighteenth-century heyday. Yet others were constructed upon virgin sites, as,
for instance, Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum). Between these towns the Romans
constructed a network of major and secondary roads, not always as straight as
tradition would have them but of remarkable solidity as the surviving road
across the moors at Blackstone Edge, Littleborough, still testifies. Prom
London, roads radiated all over the country along routes which for much of
their length are still in use as modern thoroughfares: to the north by way of
Watling Street and Ermine Street; to the east by way of the Colchester road; to
Chichester in the south by Stane Street; to the west by the road that passed
through Silchester then on to Cirencester (Corinium) and Gloucester.
Just off this road, at Chedworth,
Gloucestershire, are the well-preserved remains of a Roman villa, one of many
which Romanized Britons occupied during the days of the Empire. Over six
hundred of these Roman villas have now been unearthed, ranging from quite
simple one-storey buildings to large houses of stone and slate, and splendid palatial
residences like the villa at Fishbourne which was probably occupied by the
Romanized Celtic King Cogidubnus. And, from the objects dug up on their sites
and in their surrounding farms, it has been possible to reconstruct the
pleasant life then enjoyed by the well-to-do under the protection of Roman
rule. Togas seem to have been worn in the Roman fashion and shoes or sandals of
leather. In cold weather rooms, attractively furnished and handsomely decorated
with porphyry and marble, bronze ornaments and terracotta figurines, were kept
warm by heated flues beneath mosaic-patterned floors. In those rooms where
meals were eaten there were blue and amber glass dishes and bowls, silver
plates, knives and spoons, oil lamps and candlesticks. In bedrooms there were
mirrors and boxwood combs on dressing-tables, ointment jars and scent bottles,
ear-picks, skin-scrapers and manicure sets, pots of rouge, earrings and
bracelets. There were pens and ink-wells for writing letters, dice and counters
for playing games. Wine (better than the local fermentations) and olive oil
were imported from the Continent, carpgts from Egypt, silk, pepper and spices
from the East. Latin was the official language; and most well-educated people
spoke it as well as Celtic which remained the language of the poor, though many
Latin words were incorporated into it.
For over three hundred years Britain remained
a relatively untroubled outpost of the Roman world, the barbarians from
beyond the frontiers of the Empire being kept at bay by forts and legions along
coasts, at Branodunum (Brancaster) on the east coast, for example, and Anderida
(Pevensey) in the south, and in the north by Hadrian’s Wall, a great defensive
barrier with a castle every mile, which was constructed on the orders of the
Emperor Hadrian on a visit to Britain in about AD 121. Stretching seventy-three
miles from shore to shore across bracken-covered moors from the Tyne to the
Solway, it remains the most impressive surviving Roman landmark in the
country.
Overrun
and partially demolished by tribesmen from the north in 368, the Wall was again
attacked in 383 and the sentries in its turrets and the soldiers in its forts
were slaughtered out of hand. By now the Empire itself was beginning to
crumble into ruins; and in Britain one legion after another was recalled to
fight Rome’s wars on the Continent until by the middle of the fifth century
Rome’s protection was at an end. The islanders were left to fend for
themselves.
NATIVES
ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD NORMAN RULE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET
Crown and People Twilight of Middle Ages Tudor
England Early Stuart England
EMPIRE AND INDUSTRY THE AGE OF REFORM 20th century