The restructuring of britain
When the Romans conquered a country, or a large area of a country, they immediately set about restructuring the land into manageable divisions. In such places as Britain, this was made easier by the way, in which the current natives had divided the country into regions based on the land occupied by individual tribes. The Romans gave these areas the name of civitas with a constitution and carefully laid out duties and rights. The main town within this area was designated the civitas capital. In Britain, the Romans saw no evidence of a large town anywhere after the invasion. In 49 AD they began to teach the Roman way of living to the British by founding Colchester on the site of an abandoned fortress. In doing so they were making use of land that the Romans had ownership over. Retired legionaries inhabited Colchester. Each inhabitant of the town was given a plot of land, on which was his house and a larger plot outside the town. This land (territorium) was deemed to be part of the town. This was a large area, probably as much as 640 sq. miles (400 sq. km). Later towards the end of the first century, two more chartered coloniae were founded at Lincoln and Gloucester. In both cases the Romans needed extra land. This was done by buying plots from the Corieltauvi and Dobunni tribes. It is interesting to note that the Romans bought this land, rather than just acquired it. Since the Boudiccan Rebellion, Britain had gone through a period of change and recovery, with the Romans learning that it was better to persuade the natives, rather than starting a confrontation and forcing them to accept Roman ways. In later times, the Romans had adapted and were using the method of promoting existing towns to a higher status, and so a fourth colonia was established at York, which later became the capital of Britannia Inferior. This caused conflict of interests, as the promotion of towns was done on a gradual process. The first step was to make the town a municipium. In Britain there were two types of law that applied to these new towns:
Latin Law where some of the established native laws still applied.
Full Roman Law, where the native laws did not apply and were replaced by the Roman Constitution.
Understandably, the natives preferred Latin Law, as they did at least, retain some power. The next was Verulamium and probably even later, Canterbury, Dorchester and Leicester were given this status. In all this, the question remains of London (Londinium). Where did the capital of Britain fit into all this? London became a municipium towards the end of the first century, but was never part of the local government network. It was the capital of Britannia and probably promoted to colonia in the fourth century and given the honorary title of Augusta. Either way, the towns were self-governing communities that took directions from the provincial governor. He would be in contact with Rome, where most final decisions started life.