A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Single men, local occurrences are the least important items in its annals 

 and the fortunes of separate provinces are merged more or less completely 

 in the great movement of the whole mass. We can sketch the features 

 of each or any province, its populousness, its degree of civilization, its 

 mineral or agricultural or commercial wealth. We can string together 

 in a rough narrative a few events connected with it. But we cannot 

 write a real history of it, for it had no individual existence for the 

 historian to trace. 



A second fact imposes a more serious limitation. When the 

 Romans ruled our island it was not divided into its present counties or 

 into any districts geographically identical with them. Neither the 

 boundaries of the Celtic tribes nor those of the Roman administrative 

 areas, so far as we know, agree with our existing county boundaries. 

 The student of Roman remains discovered in any one county deals with 

 a division of land which for his purpose is accidental and arbitrary. The 

 phrase Roman Northamptonshire is convenient, but strictly speaking it 

 is a contradiction in terms. We can describe, as we shall presently do, 

 the Roman remains found in our county, but we do so not because it is 

 scientific, but because it is convenient. The topographical history and 

 the topographical literature of our island is grouped so largely by 

 counties that we can hardly treat the Roman antiquities on any other 

 basis. But all the while we shall be dealing with an area which for our 

 purpose has no meaning or unity. We can describe it ; we cannot 

 write its history. 



These facts make it desirable to diverge a little from the plan 

 followed by most county historians. Hitherto it has been customary to 

 narrate the chief events recorded by ancient writers as occurring in 

 Roman Britain, and to point out which of these events took place or 

 might be imagined to have taken place within the county. The result 

 is always to leave on the reader an impression that somehow or other 

 the county possessed in Roman times a local individuality and a local 

 history. In the following pages we shall adopt a different method. 

 Utilizing the abundant archaeological evidence, now far better known 

 and understood than a hundred years ago, we shall first sketch briefly the 

 general character of Roman Britain and we shall then proceed to describe 

 in detail the actual antiquities and to point out how far they agree with 

 this general character, how far (in other words) the district now called 

 Northamptonshire was an average bit of the Roman province. 



The Roman occupation was commenced by the Emperor Claudius 

 in A.D, 43. At first its progress was rapid. Kent and Essex were 

 seized in a few weeks ; then the army of invasion seems to have divided 

 into three divisions, the Second Legion moving south-west towards 

 Somerset and Devon, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions north-west 

 towards Shrewsbury and Chester, the Ninth Legion north towards 

 Lincoln. We have in Northamptonshire some remains which may be 

 faint traces of the operations of the Ninth and Twentieth Legions ; to 

 these we shall return below (in sec. 7). The result was that within three 



158 



