1. Ancient Britain. Roman England.

As is well known, the British Isles were invaded by the Romans in the I c. B.C. and towards the end of the I c. A.D. Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B.C. and 54 B.C. with an army of 10,000 men, but he was not able to conquer the country. Caesar’s two invasions were little more than reconnaissances in force. In A.D. 43 the Romans under the Emperor Claudius were able to invade Britain and make it a province of the Empire. The huge Roman Empire stretched from what is now the north of England to the Red Sea.

The province of Britain included modern England and Wales but not Scotland, Devon or Cornwall. The province became “Romanized”: its economy integrated into the trading network of the Empire, with new towns serving as centres of marketing, manufacture and administration. It was no less Romanized in language: most people, especially in towns, learned to speak or at least understand Latin, though people still used their Celtic tongue at home. The Britons were not conquered easily. They rose on every possible occasion and died by thousands, sword in hand. There was a resistance in Wales and the Romans destroyed the Druids, a clan of Celtic priests as their rituals allegedly involved human sacrifice. Suetonius, a Roman general, came and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred, and burned the Druids in their own wicker-cages, by their own fires.

There was a revolt in A.D. 60 in East Anglia where Queen Boadicea of the Iceni tribe and her daughters were fighting against Roman soldiers and were defeated. Boudicca’sfighting men destroyed first the Roman town of Colchester, London and St. Albans. Expecting no mercy from the Roman soldiers Queen Boadicea gave her daughters poison and then took it herself, and when the Roman soldiers reached her, she was dead. There is a monument to Queen Boadicea in London.

Roman Britain divided itself into two parts: the civil or lowland district and the upland or military. Roman ruler of Britain Agricola built a great wall of earth, more than 70 miles long, to keep the Picts and Scots. Emperor Hadrian strengthened it. Severus built it afresh of stone. The wall became known as Hadrian Wall. It was over 70 miles or 120 kilometres long and almost 4 metres high. The Roman occupation of Britain lasted nearly 400 years; it came to an end when the Roman legions were recalled from Britain to defend the central provinces of the Roman Empire from the attacks of the barbarian tribes.When the Roman Empire disintegrated, Britain was conquered by a coalition of West Germanic tribes.

2. Anglo-Saxon Britain.

It is believed that the British chiefs asked Anglo-Saxon soldiers to come from Germany to help them to defend Britons from Picts and Scots, fierce tribes from the North who came pouring over the unguarded Hadrian Wall and plundered the rich towns. Anglo-Saxons were strong and well trained, they defeated Picts and Scots, but when afterwards Britons asked them to leave they refused to do it and stayed. When they appeared about 450 as intending conquerors and settlers they found much of the work of the Romans undone already. The richest and most civilized part of the island, in which their landings were made, had been laid waste before their arrival.

For a long time the tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes fought with one another for supreme power. As time went on, several kingdoms were formed by the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th c. on the territory of Britain. One body of Saxons, conquering the Britons in the East and settling there, called their kingdom Essex; another body settled in the West and called their kingdom Wessex; the Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in one place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in another. And gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in England, which were called the Saxon Heptarchy (Northumbria).