BRISTOW, HENRY WILLIAM (1817–1889), English geologist, son of Major-General H. Bristow, who served in the Peninsular War, was born on the 17th of May 1817. He was educated at King’s College, London, under John Phillips, then professor of geology. In 1842 he was appointed assistant geologist on the Geological Survey, and in that service he remained for forty-six years, becoming director for England and Wales in 1872, and retiring in 1888. He was elected F.R.S. in 1862. He died in London on the 14th of June 1889. His publications (see Geol. Mag., 1889, p. 384) include A Glossary of Mineralogy (1861) and The Geology of the Isle of Wight (1862).
BRITAIN (Gr. Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, Βρεττανία; Lat. Britannia, rarely Brittania), the anglicized form of the classical name of England, Wales and Scotland, sometimes extended to the British Isles as a whole (Britannicae Insulae). The Greek and Roman forms are doubtless attempts to reproduce a Celtic original, the exact form of which is still matter of dispute. Brittany (Fr. Bretagne) in western France derived its name from Britain owing to migrations in the 5th and 6th century A.D. The personification of Britannia as a female figure may be traced back as far as the coins of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (early 2nd century A.D.); its first appearance on modern coins is on the copper of Charles II. (see Numismatics).
In what follows, the archaeological interest of early Britain is dealt with, in connexion with the history of Britain in Pre-Roman, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon days; this account being supplementary to the articles England; English History; Scotland, &c.
Pre-Roman Britain
Geologists are not yet agreed when and by whom Britain was first peopled. Probably the island was invaded by a succession of races. The first, the Paleolithic men, may have died out or retired before successors arrived. During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages we can dimly trace further immigrations. Real knowledge begins with two Celtic invasions, that of the Goidels in the later part of the Bronze Age, and that of the Brythons and Belgae in the Iron Age. These invaders brought Celtic civilization and dialects. It is uncertain how far they were themselves Celtic in blood and how far they were numerous enough to absorb or obliterate the races which they found in Britain. But it is not unreasonable to think that they were no mere conquering caste, and that they were of the same race as the Celtic-speaking peoples of the western continent. By the age of Julius Caesar all the inhabitants of Britain, except perhaps some tribes of the far north, were Celts in speech and customs. Politically they were divided into separate and generally warring tribes, each under its own princes. They dwelt in hill forts with walls of earth or rude stone, or in villages of round huts sunk into the ground and resembling those found in parts of northern Gaul, or in subterranean chambered houses, or in hamlets of pile-dwellings constructed among the marshes. But, at least in the south, market centres had sprung up, town life was beginning, houses of a better type were perhaps coming into use, and the southern tribes employed a gold coinage and also a currency of iron bars or ingots, attested by Caesar and by surviving examples, which weigh roughly, some two-thirds of a pound, some 223 ℔, but mostly 113 ℔. In religion, the chief feature was the priesthood of Druids, who here, as in Gaul, practised magical arts and barbarous rites of human sacrifice, taught a secret lore, wielded great influence, but, at least as Druids, took ordinarily no part in politics. In art, these tribes possessed a native Late Celtic fashion, descended from far-off Mediterranean antecedents and more directly connected with the La-Tène culture of the continental Celts. Its characteristics were a flamboyant and fantastic treatment of plant and animal (though not of human) forms, a free use of the geometrical device called the “returning spiral,” and much skill in enamelling. Its finest products were in bronze, but the artistic impulse spread to humbler work in wood and pottery. The late Celtic age was one which genuinely delighted in beauty of form and detail. In this it resembled the middle ages rather than the Roman empire or the present day, and it resembled them all the more in that its love of beauty, like theirs, was mixed with a feeling for the fantastic and the grotesque. The Roman conquest of northern Gaul (57–50 B.C.) brought Britain into definite relation with the Mediterranean. It was already closely connected with Gaul, and when Roman civilization and its products invaded Gallia Belgica, they passed on easily to Britain. The British coinage now begins to bear Roman legends, and after Caesar’s two raids (55, 54 B.C.) the southern tribes were regarded at Rome, though they do not seem to have regarded themselves, as vassals. Actual conquest was, however, delayed. Augustus planned it. But both he and his successor Tiberius realized that the greater need was to consolidate the existing empire, and absorb the vast additions recently made to it by Pompey, Caesar and Augustus.
Roman Britain
I. The Roman Conquest.—The conquest of Britain was undertaken by Claudius in A.D. 43. Two causes coincided to produce the step. On the one hand a forward policy then ruled at Rome, leading to annexations in various lands. On the other hand, a probably philo-Roman prince, Cunobelin (known to literature as Cymbeline), had just been succeeded by two sons, Caractacus (q.v.) and Togodumnus, who were hostile to Rome. Caligula, the half-insane predecessor of Claudius, had made in respect to this event some blunder which we know only through a sensational exaggeration, but which doubtless had to be made good. An immediate reason for action was the appeal of a fugitive British prince, presumably a Roman partisan and victim of Cunobelin’s sons. So Aulus Plautius with a singularly well equipped army of some 40,000 men landed in Kent and advanced on London. Here Claudius himself appeared—the one reigning emperor of the 1st century who crossed the waves of ocean,—and the army, crossing the Thames, moved forward through Essex and captured the native capital, Camulodūnum, now Colchester. From the base of London and Colchester three corps continued the conquest. The left wing, the Second Legion (under Vespasian, afterwards emperor), subdued the south; the centre, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions, subdued the midlands, while the right wing, the Ninth Legion, advanced through the eastern part of the island. This strategy was at first triumphant. The lowlands of Britain, with their partly Romanized and partly scanty population and their easy physical features, presented no obstacle. Within three or four years everything south of the Humber and east of the Severn had been either directly annexed or entrusted, as protectorates, to native client-princes.
A more difficult task remained. The wild hills and wilder tribes of Wales and Yorkshire offered far fiercer resistance. There followed thirty years of intermittent hill fighting (A.D. 47–79). The precise steps of the conquest are not known. Legionary fortresses were established at Wroxeter (for a time only), Chester and Caerleon, facing the Welsh hills, and at Lincoln in the north-east. Monmouthshire, and Flintshire with its lead mines, were early overrun; in 60 Suetonius Paulinus reached Anglesea. The method of conquest was the establishment of small detached forts in strategic positions, each garrisoned by 500 or 1000 men, and it was accompanied by a full share of those disasters which vigorous barbarians always inflict on civilized invaders. Progress was delayed too by the great revolt of Boadicea (q.v.) and a large part of the nominally conquered Lowlands. Her rising was soon crushed, but the government was obviously afraid for a while to move its garrisons forward. Indeed, other needs of the empire caused the withdrawal of the Fourteenth Legion about 67. But the decade A.D. 70–80 was decisive. A series of three able generals commanded an army restored to its proper strength by the addition of Legio II. Adiutrix, and achieved the final subjugation of Wales and the first conquest of Yorkshire, where a legionary fortress at York was substituted for that at Lincoln.
The third and best-known, if not the ablest, of these generals, Julius Agricola, moved on in A.D. 80 to the conquest of the farther north. He established between the Clyde and Forth a frontier meant to be permanent, guarded by a line of forts,
