Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/71

 1920 63 Francis Haverjield PAST failure to bring Roman Britain into the orbit of historical studies and to link it up with the history of England on the one hand and with the history of the Roman empire on the other, must be brought to the door of the universities. What till the other day was the sole chair of ancient history at Oxford derives its name from the author of the Britannia. William Camden was the first writer to attempt a systematic record of the Roman remains and Roman inscriptions found in this island. Horsley, Stukeley, Gough, and other leading antiquaries of the eighteenth century followed in Camden's footsteps. At a later date great county histories came to be written ; archaeological societies were established throughout the kingdom ; excavations were conducted, often with greater zeal than scientific care ; museums were founded to house archaeological finds. But though the material for history was there, historians neglected it. Not until the appointment of Professor Haverfield in 1907 did the Camden chair come to be filled by a scholar who made his life-work the pursuit of the special studies which Camden had inaugurated in the reign of Elizabeth. In him Oxford came to have a professor of ancient history who was recognized both at home and abroad as the authoritative exponent of Romano- British history. He combined an unrivalled knowledge of his subject with a width of view which enabled him to rescue it from narrow antiquarianism. ' It is no use to know about Roman Britain in particular ', as he once told an audience with charac- teristic frankness, ' unless you also know about the Roman empire in general.' For him Roman Britain was but a province of a world empire, to be studied in its relation to imperial Rome. Haverfield approached ancient history through the classics. In 1884, on finishing his undergraduate course at Oxford, he went as a classical master to Lancing. There he turned to Tacitus and began to study Roman history as revealed in Tacitus's pages. But the revelation seemed to him to be partial and unsatisfying. The clue to the real meaning of imperial administration had still to be found. It came the very next year with the publication of Mommsen's Roman Provinces, a work which produced an