The Romans Leave Britannia
In the northwestern corner of the Roman Empire, the island of Britannia (what we refer to as Britain) was ruled by the Romans in the south and the Picts and the Scotti in the north. Romans had ruled there for 400 years, setting up local armies and cultivating lands south of Hadrian’s Wall, which Roman Emperor Hadrian had built in the early 2nd century AD to defend those living in the southern part of Britannia from the Picts and Scotti. Yet, by 400, the Roman Empire was under siege from the Goths among others. Unable to successfully defend Britannia and the rest of the Roman Empire, Constantine III, Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, withdrew all Roman troops from the province of Britannia around 409. Britannia was only a small part of the Roman Empire and was distant and difficult to maintain. It represented five per cent of the Roman Empire but required twelve per cent of its military expenditure to shield from others. For those reasons, all requests for future Roman military support were denied after 410 and Britannia was left on its own.
Without military protection, landowners in Britannia saw no advantages to paying taxes to Rome. Not only did they stop paying taxes, but they expelled the Roman administrators and turned their backs on Roman law. The island then became a revolving door of newcomers who, with a remarkable sense of timing, started moving in right around the departure of the Roman army.
Scholars refer to the individuals living in the southern part of Britannia before and during the Roman occupation as Celtic Britons. Celtic Britons, especially those along the east coast, had adopted the Roman way of life. Heavy Roman military presence was found here and inhabitants lived in Roman-style houses within Roman settlements. They spoke a type of British Latin (Celtic and Gaelic), wore Roman-style cloths, and used roads like those found in the rest of the Roman Empire. It is interesting to note that Celtic Britons were not native inhabitants of the island either. They, too, had immigrated from other areas.
The Scotti of Ireland and the Picts from Scotland had been regularly crossing over into Roman territory in Britain. However, some other groups who did not have a long history of attacking Britain (e.g., the Angles from what is now the border of Germany and Denmark (Schleswig Holstein), the Saxons from what is now northern Germany, and the Jutes from southern Denmark) began to invade the island in the first half of the 5th century. For convenience, historians typically refer to these new immigrants as Anglo-Saxons.
What happened to the Celtic Britons? If they weren’t killed by invaders, they migrated to different areas. Some took to the sea travelling south to the Amorican peninsula in what is now France. The peninsula became known as Brittany after the Britons who settled it. Other Britons were driven to the fringes of the island: to Cornwall, the Lake District (then called Cumbria), and Wales (then called Cymru).
One reason scholars attribute to the new migration of Anglo-Saxons is climate change. Warmer English summers meant better crops; and Britain was far less likely to flood than Denmark, Holland, or Belgium. Also, Anglo-Saxon mercenaries had for many years fought in the Roman army in Britain and some had already decided to remain on the island instead of returning home. Roman soldiers had also remained because when they had served for twenty-five years, they were bestowed with attractive land, sometimes in Britannia. As unstable as post-Roman Britannia appears to us, it was nowhere near as dangerous as life on the continent.
Whatever the reasons, individuals who were not Celtic Britons continued to make Britannia their home and powerful landowners and/or warlords became the final authority, positioning themselves as the law of the land. It would be another 400 years until these individuals were able to unify themselves under one leader of all of Britain.
