Brass, brazen vessels, salt, and earthenware, were then, with the lighter articles and trinkets previously named, the chief articles of import from Gaul into Britain. Though chiefly occupied in pastoral and agricultural pursuits, the ancient Britons, from the character of their exports, evidently understood, not merely the arts of extracting tin and lead and even gold silver and iron from their mines, but were skilled in the manufacture of objects in glass and amber, and also in some works purely ornamental, as well as in the conversion of iron to many useful purposes. Skins were no doubt still used as articles of dress by many of the less civilized inhabitants who resided in the remote parts of the island; but those Britons who occupied the frequented parts of the coast, or the chief towns, were, from the observations of Cæsar, clothed in better and more comfortable garments, very likely in woollen cloths. As manufactures in wool were among the earliest arts which first brought England into notice as a great commercial nation many centuries afterwards, it is reasonable to suppose that woollen fabrics may, even in early times, have been part of the staple of the country.
Colchester, and its mint.
Colchester, the principal city of eastern Britain, was made by Claudius,[451] at the commencement of the Christian era, as appears from his coins, a Roman colony. Here Cunobeline, king of the countries lying between the Thames and the Nen, established a mint, of which as many as sixty varieties have been engraved by Mr. Evans.[452] No descriptive account of this ancient town has been preserved, but it is reasonable to suppose that, as the capital in which the king resided, it was better built than the “fenced collection of huts” Cæsar describes.
London.
A.D. 61.
Some doubts have been expressed as to the very early antiquity of London; and, on the whole, it is most likely that it was not till Claudius had appointed Plautius to the supreme command of the island, that the Romans directed their attention to London,[453] and established it as the chief commercial centre for the arts and manufactures of Kent and of the valley of the Thames, over which river, if the testimony of Dio can be relied on, the Britons had already constructed a bridge somewhere near the site of the lowest of the existing structures. Ten years afterwards, in the reign of Nero, we hear of the now famous city, the greatest and wealthiest the world has ever seen, having become the residence of a great number of such dealers as the Romans dignified with the title of merchants, and between whom and the small traders of Rome, Cicero drew, as we have already noticed, so marked and so supercilious a distinction.
Agricola, A.D. 78-85.
It is not the province of this work to follow in detail the course of Roman conquest. It is sufficient to state that the Romans only gained their footing in Britain by slow degrees, and that the legions which had conquered other countries almost as soon as they marched into them, had to encounter many a sturdy foe, and to achieve many a hard-earned victory, ere they obtained full control over a people, who, though fully alive to the advantages of a commercial intercourse with Rome, cherished a love of independence unsurpassed by any other nation of antiquity. Indeed, it was not until the governorship of Agricola that Britain could in any sense be called a Roman province; and that Agricola succeeded where other generals, such as Plautius and Ostorius Scapula, had failed, is mainly attributable to the care and gentleness of his administration, and to his obvious desire to make the chains he had forged for the British as agreeable as possible to them. Agricola was the first Roman general who had penetrated into Scotland; he was also the first to sail round the whole country, an undertaking then of no ordinary danger, especially at the advanced season of the year when it was performed. It is a striking remark of Tacitus that the harbours of Ireland, which one or two centuries before had been visited by the Gauls, and perhaps at a still earlier period by the Carthaginians, were then better known to continental merchants by means of their commerce than to those of Britain.
His fleet sails round Britain.
The influence of the rule of Agricola on the Britons.