PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON ROMAN BRITAIN
One western province seems to form an exception to the general rule. In
Britain, as it is described by the majority of English writers, we have
a province in which Roman and native were as distinct as modern
Englishman and Indian, and 'the departure of the Romans' in the fifth
century left the Britons almost as Celtic as their coming had found
them. The adoption of this view may be set down, I think, to various
reasons which have, in themselves, little to do with the subject. The
older archaeologists, familiar with the early wars narrated by Caesar
and Tacitus, pictured the whole history of the island as consisting of
such struggles. Later writers have been influenced by the analogies of
English rule in India. Still more recently, the revival of Welsh
national sentiment has inspired a hope, which has become a belief, that
the Roman conquest was an episode, after which an unaltered Celticism
resumed its interrupted supremacy. These considerations have, plainly
enough, very little value as history, and the view which is based on
them seems to me in large part mistaken. As I have pointed out, it is
not the view which is suggested by a consideration of the general
character of the western provinces. Nor do I think that it is the view
which agrees best with the special evidence which we possess in respect
of Britain. In the following paragraphs I propose to examine this
evidence. I shall adopt an archaeological rather than a legal or a
philological standpoint. The legal and philological arguments have often
been put forward. But the legal arguments are entirely _a priori_, and
they have led different scholars to very different conclusions. The
philological arguments are no less beset with difficulties. Both the
facts and their significance are obscure, and the inquiry into them has
hitherto yielded little beyond confident and yet wholly contradictory
assertions and theories which are not susceptible of proof. The
archaeological evidence, on the other hand, is definite and consistent,
and perhaps deserves fuller notice than it has yet received. It
illuminates, not only the material civilization, but also the language
and to some extent even the institutions of Roman Britain, and supplies,
though imperfectly, the facts which our legal and philological arguments
do not yield.
I need not here insert a sketch of Roman Britain. But I may call
attention to three of its features which are not seldom overlooked. In
the first place, it is necessary to distinguish the two halves of the
province, the one the northern and western uplands occupied only by
troops, and the other the eastern and southern lowlands which contained
nothing but purely civilian life.[1] The two are marked off, not in law
but in practical fact, almost as fully as if one had been _domi_ and the
other _militiae_. We shall not seek for traces of Romanization in the
military area. There neither towns existed nor villas. Northwards, no
town or country-house has been found beyond the neighbourhood of
Aldborough (Isurium), some fifteen miles north-west of York. Westwards,
on the Welsh frontier, the most advanced town was at Wroxeter
(Viroconium), near Shrewsbury, and the furthest country-house an
isolated dwelling at Llantwit, in Glamorgan.[2] In the south-west the
last house was near Lyme Regis, the last town at Exeter.[3] These are
the limits of the Romanized area. Outside of them, the population cannot
have acquired much Roman character, nor can it have been numerous enough
to form more than a subsidiary factor in our problem. But within these
limits were towns and villages and country-houses and farms, a large
population, and a developed and orderly life.
[Footnote 1: For further details see the Victoria County Histories of
_Northamptonshire_, i. 159, and _Derbyshire_, i. 191. To save frequent
references, I may say here that much of the evidence for the following
paragraphs is to be found in my articles on Romano-British remains
printed in the volumes of this History. I am indebted to its publishers
for leave to reproduce several illustrations from its pages. For others
I refer my readers to the History itself.]
[Footnote 2: See my _Military Aspects of Roman Wales_, notes 60 and 82.
There was some sort of town life at Carmarthen.]
[Footnote 3: The Roman remains discovered west of Exeter are few and
mostly later than A.D. 250. No town or country-house or farm or stretch
of roadway has ever been found here. The list of discoveries includes
only one early settlement on Plymouth harbour, another near Bodmin, of
small size, and a third, equally small and of uncertain date, on Padstow
harbour; some scanty vestiges of tin-mining, principally late; two
milestones (if milestones they be) of the early fourth century, the one
at Tintagel church and the other at St. Hilary; and some scattered
hoards and isolated bits. Portions of the country were plainly
inhabited, but the inhabitants did not learn Roman ways, like those who
lived east of the Exe. Even tin-mining was not pursued very actively
till a comparatively late period, though the Bodmin settlement may be
connected with tin-works close by.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE CIVIL AND MILITARY DISTRICTS OF BRITAIN.]
Secondly, the distribution of civilian life, even in the lowlands, was
singularly uneven. It is not merely that some districts were the special
homes of wealthier residents. We have also to conceive of some parts as
densely peopled and of some as hardly inhabited. Portions of Kent,
Sussex, and Somerset are set thick with country-houses and similar
vestiges of Romano-British life. But other portions of the same
counties, southern Kent, northern Sussex, western Somerset, show very
few traces of any settled life at all. The midland plain, and in
particular Warwickshire,[1] seems to have been the largest of these
'thin spots'. Here, among great woodlands and on damp and chilly clay,
there dwelt not merely few civilized Roman-Britons, but few occupants of
any sort.
[Footnote 1: _Victoria Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 228.]
And lastly, Romano-British life was on a small scale. It was, I think,
normal in quality and indeed not very dissimilar from that of many parts
of Gaul. But it was in any case defective in quantity. We find towns in
Britain, as elsewhere, and farms or country-houses. But the towns are
small and somewhat few, and the country-houses indicate comfort more
often than wealth. The costlier objects of ordinary use, fine mosaics,
precious glass, gold and silver ornaments, occur comparatively
seldom.[1] We have before us a civilization which, like a man whose
constitution is sound rather than strong, might perish quickly from a
violent shock.
[Footnote 1: See my remarks in Traill's _Social England_ (illustrated
edition, 1901), i. 141-61.]