They are described by a
contemporary Roman writer as quick, well-armed; turbulent and
contumacious from their bravery, their numbers, and their common
agreement. These were not the people who were likely to have stood upon
a wall to be pulled down by hooked weapons. They might have been the
people who had clung, more than the other inhabitants of the Roman
provinces, to their original language and customs; but it is not
improbable that they would have been of the mixed races with whom Rome
had been in more intimate relations, and to whom she continued to render
offices of friendship after the separation of the island province from
her empire.
Amid all this conflict of testimony there is the undoubted fact that
out of the Roman municipal institutions had risen the establishment of
separate sovereignties, as Procopius relates. Britain, according to St.
Jerome, was "a province fertile in tyrants." The Roman municipal
government was kept compact and uniform under a great centralizing
power. It fell to pieces here, as in Gaul, when that power was
withdrawn.
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