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The Romans

Romans first landed in Britain in 55 BC and their main aim was to assess the wealth of the country and later join Britain to the Roman Empire. The conquest of most of Britain came in AD 43, when Aulus Plautius, under the command of the Emperor Claudius, arrived in Britain with 40,000 men. Roman troops established control over the south-east of Britain and Claudius himself arrived in Britain. He received the submission of many Briton kings and then left. Nevertheless, there were British leaders who still resisted such as Caratacus, who finally was taken prisoner in AD 51, and Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni people. Iceni were harshly treated by Romans and their revenge was terrible: in AD 61, Colchester, St Albans and London were destroyed and some 70,000 people killed. Finally Boudicca’s revolt was suppressed and she took poison.

Southern Britain settled down to peace and rapid Romanisation. Where possible, Romans ruled through the existing upper class, which was encouraged to adopt the Latin language and the Roman lifestyle. While the Celtic peasantry remained illiterate and only Celtic-speaking, a number of town dwellers spoke Latin and Greek with ease, and the richer landowners in the country almost certainly used Latin.

The Romans could not conquer Caledonia, as they called Scotland, although they spent over a century trying to do so. At last they built a strong wall along the northern border, named after the Emperor Hadrian who planned it. Hadrian’s Wall was intended to defend the province of Britain against invasions by tribes from the north (Picts and Scots).

Roman control of Britain came to an end as the Roman Empire began to collapse. The Roman legions found it more and more difficult to stop the raiders from crossing Hadrian’s Wall. The same was happening on the European mainland as Germanic groups, Saxons and Franks, began to raid the coast of Gaul. In AD 410 Rome pulled its last soldiers out of Britain.

The Romans left about twenty large towns of about 5,000 inhabitants, and almost one hundred smaller ones. Many of these towns were at first army camps, and the Latin word for camp, castra, has remained part of many town names to this day (with the ending chester, caster or cester): Gloucester, Leicester, Doncaster, Winchester, Chester, Lancaster and many others besides. These towns were built with stone as well as wood, and had planned streets, markets and shops. They were connected by roads which were so well built that they continued to be used long after the Romans left, and became the main roads of modern Britain. Six of these Roman roads met in London, a capital city of about 20,000 people.

Outside the towns, the biggest change during the Roman occupation was the growth of large farms, called villas. Each villa had many workers. The villas were usually close to towns so that the crops could be sold easily. It is very difficult to be sure how many people were living in Britain when the Romans left. Probably it was as many as five million, partly because of the peace and the increased economic life which the Romans had brought to the country. The new wave of invaders changed all that.