Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/258

A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE antiquities of Worcestershire illustrate this general sketch ; that is how far the district now called Worcestershire was an ordinary and average bit of Roman Britain. The Roman occupation was undertaken by the Emperor Claudius and commenced in a.d. 43. At first its progress was rapid. Within three or four years the Romans overran all the south and midlands as far as Exeter, Shrewsbury and Lincoln : part was annexed, part left to ' protected ' native princes. Then came a pause : some thirty years were spent in reducing the hill tribes of Wales and Yorkshire, and during this period the ' protected ' principalities were gradually absorbed. About A.D. 80 the advance into Scotland was attempted : in 124 Hadrian built his Wall from Newcastle to Carlisle, and thereafter the Roman frontier was sometimes to the north, never to the south of this line. The ' province ' thus gained fell practically though not officially into two marked divisions, which coincide roughly with the lowlands occupied in the first years of the conquest and the hills which were tamed later. The former were the regions of settled civil life, and among these we have to include the district now called Worcestershire. The troops appear to have been very soon withdrawn from them, and with a few definite exceptions there was probably not a fort or fortress or military post throughout this part of our island. On the other hand the Welsh and northern hills formed a purely miUtary district, with forts and fortresses and roads, but with no towns or ordinary civiHan life. It was the Roman practice, at least in the European provinces of the Empire, to mass the troops almost exclusively along the frontiers, and Britain was no exception. The army which garrisoned this military district was perhaps forty thousand men. It ranked as one of the chief among provincial armies, and constituted the most important element in Roman Britain. With the military district however we are not now concerned. For our present purpose it suffices to note its existence, in order to explain why traces of military occupation are absent in Worcestershire. But we may pause to examine the chief features of the non-military districts within which Worcestershire is included. These features are not sensational. Britain was a small province, remote from Rome and by no means wealthy. It did not reach the higher develop- ments of city hfe, of culture or of commerce, which we meet in more favoured lands — Gaul or Spain or Africa. Nevertheless it had a character of its own. In the first place, Britain like all the provinces of the Western Empire became Romanized. Perhaps it became Romanized later and less perfectly than these, but in the end the Britons adopted generally the Roman speech and civilization, and in our island, as in all western Europe, the difference between Roman and provincial practically vanished. When the Roman rule in Britain ended (about a.d. 410), the so-called departure of the Romans did not mean what the end of English rule in India or French rule in Algeria would mean. It was not an emigration of alien officials, soldiers and traders ; it was more administrative than