239 
the inscriptions and tombs are those of soldiers. ‘©The harshness of a climate,” 
says Mr. Green in The Making of England, “that knew neither the olive nor the 
vine, deterred the men of the south from coming here, and the care with which 
every villa was furnished with its elaborate system of hot-air flues, shows that the 
climate of England was as intolerable to the Roman provincial, as that of India, 
in spite of punkas and verandahs, is to the English civilian, or the English 
planter.” (p. 7.) 
At the close of the Roman rule, in spite of its roads, its towns, and its mining 
works, Britain remained but a half reclaimed country, whose surface was chiefly 
occupied by a vast extent of forest and waste land. This was especially the case 
in the Silurian district which this great military station controlled. Here, to the 
last, the natives regarded the invaders with the utmost hatred, and could only be 
controlled by thé actual presence of the military force. 
On the departure of the Roman Legions (A.D., 411) the inhabitants were left 
to their own resources. The towns already provided with rulers for a long time 
held their own. Those which had not walls for their protection were provided 
with them, and the towns ruled over the adjacent districts. This could not long 
continue, and the country soon became a prey to the marauders that the Roman 
soldiers had kept in check. The Picts and Irish pirates, the Jutes and the pirates 
from the northern seas, soon produced such devastation, that the towns uniting 
called in the Saxons from Holstein (4.D. 477) and the Angles from Sleswig (A.D. 
540) to oppose them, with the result, as history tells us, that they soon seized the 
country for themselves. Britain was broken up into a congeries of states, all 
struggling for supremacy, with the fierceness that/ gave rise to the proverb 
‘‘ Britain fertile in tyrants.” 
The destruction of the towns and stations established by the Romans on the 
Welsh border became universal between Deva (Chester), Glevum (Gloucester), 
and Gobannium (Abergavenny). They were all, without exception, sooner or 
later, according to their own power of resistance, stormed, pillaged, and burnt, 
and the inhabitants who resisted, or were unable to escape, were murdered 
remorselessly. History has preserved to us a brief record of the fate of Uriconium, 
the Viroconium of Ptolemy (Wroxeter), which was the largest and most important 
of them all. Mr. Green in his work, The Making of England, gives this 
account of it. In a.p. 583 Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, having overcome 
the combined forces of the rulers of the cities of Corinium (Cirencester), Glevum 
(Gloucester), and Aque Solis (Bath), with the men from the wide district under 
their control, at the battle of Deorham, pushed up the valley of the Severn, 
through the Forest of Wyre, and reached Uriconium. This town was seated at 
the base of the Wrekin, not far from the banks of the Severn. ‘¢ The walls of the 
town enclosed a space more than double that of Roman London,” says Mr. 
Thomas Wright, in his Guide to Uriconium. Its broad streets contrast 
strangely with the narrow alleys of British towns. The remains of its forum, its 
theatre, its amphitheatre, prove its wealth and importance. Ceawlin stormed the 
town, and its very existence came to an end. Its ruins show that the place was 
