In the early third century the country was divided into two provinces, Britannia Superior with London as its capital and Britannia Inferior with York as its centre. ‘Superior’ and ‘Inferior’ were geographical, not qualitative, terms. The two areas were later subdivided into four and then five provinces, emphasizing the fact that the country was being closely administered and exploited.
As the country became a settled part of the empire, its role changed. The armies of occupation became armies of defence; they became naturalized, with a selfconscious local or regional identity. Over one-tenth of the entire imperial army was stationed in the colony, which meant that its forces had extraordinary power over events in distant Rome. Mutinies, and uprisings, were not uncommon. In AD 268, one governor of England, Carausius, proclaimed himself emperor. He took his forces to the continent and, in his absence, the various towns and cities of the country took measures to defend themselves against possible reprisals from Rome. One hundred years later another Roman commander seized the province and declared it to be independent. He was disabused of this notion in a battle somewhere in central England, but it is a measure of the significance of the country in imperial calculations.
England was worth a fight. Its ports, its metals, its taxes, helped to sustain the vast engine of Roman commerce. Yet it remained wealthy and productive largely because of its agriculture. In AD 359 the emperor, Julian, organized a fleet of 600 ships to transport corn from England to the war zones of the Rhine. The country had become one of the bread baskets of Europe, and by the fourth century it had never been more prosperous. The villas of the grandees became larger and more luxurious, and there can be no doubt that the social stratification of the country grew ever more pronounced under the auspices of imperial rule. The Roman English controlled the Iron Age English.
The northern borders were always a source of conflict, with the weight of the Scots and the Picts pressing against them, but the general frontiers of the province soon came into jeopardy. There is a curious alignment of forts in southern England known generally as the ‘Saxon Shore’, but their purpose is not altogether clear. Were they a means of defending the coast against Saxon invaders from the northwest of Europe, or were they perhaps designed to harbour Saxon fighters and traders? They may thus have been designed to protect the seaways between England and Europe from pirates and other marauders.
Yet, as with so many aspects of England under imperial control, the evidence is fragmentary and inconclusive; we rely on chance inscriptions, the indications of archaeology and the occasional commentaries of Roman historians. The Roman governance of England lasted for 350 years – the same span of time that separates the contemporary reader from the Great Fire of London – and yet it is the least-known phase in the country’s history.
In particular we cannot see the people – the Romanized leaders in their fashionable and luxurious villas, the smaller landowners in farmsteads built of stone or timber, the townsmen inhabiting one-or two-room houses along narrow and squalid lanes, the civil servants working in offices while wearing their official togas and military belts, the landless labourers living in dormitories set well away from the villas, the whole general tide and swell of population unmoved by purges and coups and counter-purges that are evident in the pages of Roman histories.
There is much unknown, also, about the advance of Christianity. England had been introduced to that faith in the second century, but it was perforce a minority religion. The Roman English had been reconciled to the Roman gods, while the Iron Age English no doubt still venerated the ancient deities of hill and forest. Christianity was not an indigenous faith. Nevertheless, Christian vessels and plaques from the third century have been found in Huntingdonshire, close to the river Nene, and are clear evidence of a local shrine; they are in fact the earliest examples of such vessels from the whole of the empire. A Christian cemetery, of approximately the same date, has been uncovered at Poundbury in Dorset. Christianity had penetrated as far north as Carlisle by the fourth century.
Christianity only became the sacerdotal face of the empire after Constantine the Great’s conversion in AD 312; Constantine had in fact been acclaimed and appointed emperor at York in AD 306 and in subsequent years seems to have considered England to be one of the spiritual centres of his rule. York itself was refashioned in honour of his elevation, and he made three further visits to the province. He styled himself on Britannicus Maximus, and it seems likely that London itself was for a while renamed Augusta in his honour. So the Christianity of England was an important element of its later development.
It was a monotheistic faith in a period when the emperor himself aspired to single rule, and it assumed a uniform set of values and beliefs that could be transmitted across the empire. It helped to support the legislative and bureaucratic forces of the centre. Its adherents were, unsurprisingly, drawn from the governing class. There can be no doubt that in England, for example, the Romanized population were quick to embrace the delights of an institutionalized faith. That is why Christianity became associated with the culture of the villas. It was also a religion of the administrative elite in the towns and cities, where a bishop was charged with the care of his urban flock.
In AD 314 three English bishops, together with a priest and a deacon, were attending an ecclesiastical council at Arles in southern France. The bishops came from York, London and Lincoln; the deacon and priest arrived from Cirencester. Evidence for what may be a Christian cathedral, complete with marble and painted walls, has been found at excavations near Tower Hill. A holy well was located in the centre of the nave. This may have been the diocesan centre for Bishop Restitutus of London. There is precious little evidence for other churches of the third and fourth centuries (although one has been found at Silchester), but there is good reason for this. The earliest churches lie concealed beneath more recent ones in the long history of sacred spaces. We would find the churches of early English Christianity only if we could uproot the cathedrals and churches of the modern world.
No empire can last forever; no state can remain steady and unscathed. The frontiers of the Roman polity were steadily being threatened and, in many places, overwhelmed. The pressure of the northern tribes grew ever more insidious. The Franks had entered northern Gaul. The Visigoths were to settle in Aquitania. The threat to England was posed by the Picts and the Scots in the north, together with their tribal allies among the Franks and the Saxons. In AD 367 a force overcame Hadrian’s Wall, and then in dispersed bands moved southward to ravage the country; the commander of the forts of the Saxon Shore was murdered and the provincial leader known as Dux Britanniarum was captured. It was a notable defeat for the English. Roman intervention and rebuilding, including the refortification of key posts, helped to maintain prosperity and peace for forty years; but then the northern tribes came back.
A series of bids for imperial power by various pretenders meant that, at the beginning of the fifth century, England was effectively stripped of its military forces. They had gone off in search of glory. Civil war between the various pretenders to the imperial throne weakened the self-discipline and orderliness that had always been the sign of Roman rule. The administrative machinery was beginning to break apart. In 408 the northern tribes were emboldened once more to attack, and the Roman English had no choice but to defend themselves. A contemporary historian, Zosimus, records that they ‘took up arms and, braving danger for their own independence, freed the cities from the barbarians threatening them’. He also reports that they then expelled their Roman governors and established their own administrations.