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In this, as in all other matters, the continuity between Romano-British and English times is far greater than it is generally represented to be. The English invasion was a cruel and a desolating one, no doubt; but it could not and it did not sweep away wholly the old order of things, or blot out all the past annals of Britain, so as to prepare a tabula rasa on which Mr.
The monuments seem to shew that Christianity was established there as well as in other parts of Britain in Romano-British times.
Destruction fell even on Canterbury, where the legends tell of intercourse between Briton or Saxon, and on London, where ecclesiastical writers fondly place fifth- and sixth-century bishops. Both sites lay empty and untenanted for many years. Only in the far west, at Exeter or at Caerwent, does our evidence allow us to guess at a continuing Romano-British life. Hist.
The few Roman antiquities of Exeter that have been found are important in a comparative sense, although they contrast poorly in structural character with those of our other Romano-British towns. It has been held that not only were the foundations of the city walls Roman, but part of the existing remains of Rougemont Castle have also been assigned to this period. Mr.
Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special fondness for the cable or guilloche pattern, and we may conjecture that from Romano-British mosaics it passed in a modified form into Later Celtic art.
None, therefore, has yielded so much evidence. But we have no reason to consider Silchester exceptional in its character. Such scraps as we possess from other sites point to similar Romanization elsewhere. FVR, for instance, recurs on a potsherd from the Romano-British country town at Dorchester in Dorset.
From first to last, the Celtic tradition preserves no real remnant of recollections dating from the Romano-British age. Those who might have handed down such memories had either perished in wars with the English or sunk back into the native environment of the west. A prince with a Celtic name may have ruled Kent in 450.
And lastly, Romano-British life was on a small scale. It was, I think, normal in quality and indeed not very dissimilar from that of many parts of Gaul. But it was in any case defective in quantity. We find towns in Britain, as elsewhere, and farms or country-houses. But the towns are small and somewhat few, and the country-houses indicate comfort more often than wealth.
A good plan of the whole town, from which fig. 33 is taken, was issued in vol. lxii, plate 64, by Mr. Silchester and Caerwent did not stand alone in Britain. At Wroxeter, the ancient Viroconium, tribal centre of the Cornovii and a Romano-British country-town much like Silchester, though somewhat larger, oblong 'insulae' have recently been detected by Mr. J.P. Bushe-Fox which measure 103 x 126 yds.
The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Ð to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. No such letter was used in Roman Britain, though it occurs on earlier British coins. This total absence of written Celtic cannot be a mere accident. No other Romano-British town has been excavated so extensively or so scientifically as Silchester.
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