A history of the English Language

32.
Romanization of the Island.
It was inevitable that the military conquest of Britain should have been followed by the 
Romanization of the province. Where the Romans lived and ruled, there Roman ways 
were found. Four great highways soon spread fanlike from London to the north, the 
northwest, the west, and the southwest, while a fifth cut across the island from Lincoln to 
the Severn. Numerous lesser roads connected important military or civil centers or 
branched off as spurs from the main highways. A score of small cities and more than a
2 
In the opinion of R.G.Collingwood, Caesar’s intention was to conquer the whole island. 
See R.G.Collingwood and J.N.L.Myres, 
Roman Britain and the English Settlements
(2nd 
ed., Oxford, 1937), p. 34. 
A history of the english language 40

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hundred towns, with their Roman houses and baths, temples, and occasional theaters, 
testify to the introduction of Roman habits of life. The houses were equipped with 
heating apparatus and water supply, their floors were paved in mosaic, and their walls 
were of painted stucco—all as in their Italian counterparts. Roman dress, Roman 
ornaments and utensils, and Roman pottery and glassware seem to have been in general 
use. By the third century Christianity had made some progress in the island, and in A.D. 
314, bishops from London and York attended a church council in Gaul. Under the 
relatively peaceful conditions that existed everywhere except along the frontiers, where 
the hostile penetration of the unconquered population was always to be feared, there is 
every reason to think that Romanization had proceeded very much as it had in the other 
provinces of the empire. The difference is that in Britain the process was cut short in the 
fifth century.