II. 6. Londinium

The invasion of the Romans in AD 43 gave the beginning to the one of the greatest cities in the world - London. Before that there was no important settlement on the site of London. The Thames River flowed through marshy ground with small islands of gravel and sand. There were probably more mosquitoes than people in the area.

Aulus Plautius, he commander of the Roman troops, pushed his men up from their landing place in Kent towards Colchester, then the most important town in Britain. The Roman advance was halted by the Thames, and Plautius was forced to build a bridge to get his men across. This first "London Bridge" has been excavated recently, and found to be only yards from the modern London Bridge.

The Roman Bridge became a central point for the new network of roads which grew very fast and allowed the speedy movement of troops. The Roman settlement on the north side of the bridge, called Londinium, quickly became important as a trading centre for goods brought by boat and unloaded at wooden docks by the bridge.

In 18 years after the invasion, queen Boudicca attacked London during the rebellion against the new rulers of Britain. Her warriors leveled the city to the ground and killed thousands of the traders who had begun to settle there.

The city was quickly rebuilt, with a cluster of wooden buildings surrounding the imposing Roman civic buildings. The city continued to grow in size and splendor over the next century, and the importance of trade in Britain increased.

By the middle of the second century AD, Londinium possessed the largest basilica (town hall) west of the Alps, a governor's palace, a temple, bathhouses, and a large fort for the city garrison.

Temple of Mithras is one of the best Roman remains in London (mithraism was a form of religion popular among Roman soldiers). It was found near Walbrook during construction work and moved to Temple Court, Queen Victoria Street. Artefacts from the temple are now in the Museum of London.

London continued to grow and at its peak the population numbered about 45,000. But the Roman troops which were defending London were recalled across the Channel, and the city went into a decline which lasted several centuries.

The End of Roman Britain

The Roman legions began to withdraw from Britain at the end of the fourth century. Those who stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defences against the onslaught of the Saxon hordes. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told the cities of Britain to look to their own defences from that time on. As part of the east coast defences, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun by the early fifth century, with the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire already under way, Rome lost direct control of Britain, as well as its other provinces in Western Europe. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries heralded the next stage in the history of Britain.

As for the countryside, it is clear that it continued to be farmed. Moreover, it is likely that many Anglo-Saxon estates, especially the estates which were held by the king, were descended from Roman estates.

It was in Eastern Britain, where the Anglo-Saxon presence was strongest, that cultural continuity from Roman times was correspondingly weakest, even though the population was made up largely of the descendants of Romano-Britons.

In Western Britain, continuity was much stronger, even though the Celtic tongue (rather than Latin, apart from a few loan-words) survived. Nevertheless, in upper-class and Christian circles, Latin continued to be read and spoken, and was spread to Ireland. The standard of Latin which was written by St Patrick, his forebears, and successors was remarkable.

Evidence for the persistence of Christianity is harder to identify in South-Eastern Britain. It certainly survived in Christian enclaves such as that which centred around Verulamium, and which shifted to the hill near by where Alban was martyred in 304; it was evidently a place of pilgrimage through the Dark Ages.Nevertheless, many of the inhabitants of post-Roman Britain were still pagan. They held beliefs not so very different from those of the newcomers from North-Western Europe with whom they were to merge, adopting new styles of ornament but perhaps retaining their own traditions, such as metalworking and enamelling, and in burial rites.

Urban life had generally grown less intense by the last quarter of the fourth century, and coins minted between 378 and 388 are very rare, indicating a likely combination of economic decline, diminishing numbers of troops and problems with the payment of soldiers and officials.

Coinage circulation increased during the 390's, although it never attained the levels of earlier decades. Copper coins are very rare after 402, although minted silver and gold coins from hoards indicate they were still present in the province, even if they were not being spent. By 407 there were no new Roman coins going into circulation and by 430 it is likely that coinage as a medium of exchange had been abandoned. Pottery mass production probably ended a decade or two previously; the rich continued to use metal and glass vessels, while the poor probably adopted leather or wooden ones.