A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



antiquities of Worcestershire illustrate this general sketch ; that is how 

 far the district now called Worcestershire was an ordinary and average 

 bit of Roman Britain. 



The Roman occupation was undertaken by the Emperor Claudius 

 and commenced in a.d. 43. At first its progress was rapid. Within 

 three or four years the Romans overran all the south and midlands as far 

 as Exeter, Shrewsbury and Lincoln : part was annexed, part left to 

 ' protected ' native princes. Then came a pause : some thirty years 

 were spent in reducing the hill tribes of Wales and Yorkshire, and 

 during this period the ' protected ' principalities were gradually absorbed. 

 About A.D. 80 the advance into Scotland was attempted : in 124 

 Hadrian built his Wall from Newcastle to Carlisle, and thereafter the 

 Roman frontier was sometimes to the north, never to the south of this 

 line. The ' province ' thus gained fell practically though not officially 

 into two marked divisions, which coincide roughly with the lowlands 

 occupied in the first years of the conquest and the hills which were 

 tamed later. The former were the regions of settled civil life, and 

 among these we have to include the district now called Worcestershire. 

 The troops appear to have been very soon withdrawn from them, and 

 with a few definite exceptions there was probably not a fort or fortress 

 or military post throughout this part of our island. On the other hand 

 the Welsh and northern hills formed a purely miUtary district, with forts 

 and fortresses and roads, but with no towns or ordinary civiHan life. It 

 was the Roman practice, at least in the European provinces of the 

 Empire, to mass the troops almost exclusively along the frontiers, and 

 Britain was no exception. The army which garrisoned this military 

 district was perhaps forty thousand men. It ranked as one of the chief 

 among provincial armies, and constituted the most important element in 

 Roman Britain. With the military district however we are not now 

 concerned. For our present purpose it suffices to note its existence, 

 in order to explain why traces of military occupation are absent in 

 Worcestershire. But we may pause to examine the chief features of the 

 non-military districts within which Worcestershire is included. These 

 features are not sensational. Britain was a small province, remote from 

 Rome and by no means wealthy. It did not reach the higher develop- 

 ments of city hfe, of culture or of commerce, which we meet in more 

 favoured lands — Gaul or Spain or Africa. Nevertheless it had a character 

 of its own. 



In the first place, Britain like all the provinces of the Western 

 Empire became Romanized. Perhaps it became Romanized later and 

 less perfectly than these, but in the end the Britons adopted generally 

 the Roman speech and civilization, and in our island, as in all western 

 Europe, the difference between Roman and provincial practically vanished. 

 When the Roman rule in Britain ended (about a.d. 410), the so-called 

 departure of the Romans did not mean what the end of English rule in 

 India or French rule in Algeria would mean. It was not an emigration 

 of alien officials, soldiers and traders ; it was more administrative than 



