Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/34

6 the like whereof, the Irishmen, our next neighbours, do at this day call Fastness. But after that these hither parts of Britain were reduced into the form of a province by the Romans, who sowed the seeds of civility over all Europe; this city, whatsoever it was before, began to be renowned, and of fame. For Tacitus, who first of all authors nameth it Londinum, saith, that in the 62nd year after Christ, it was, albeit no colony of the Romans, yet most famous for the great multitude of merchants, provision, and intercourse. At which time, in that notable revolt of the Britons from Nero, in which 70,000 Romans and their confederates were slain, this city, with Verulam, near St. Albans, and Maldon in Essex, then all famous, were ransacked and spoiled. For Suetonius Paulinus, then lieutenant for the Romans in this isle, abandoned it, as not then fortified, and left it to the spoil.

Shortly after, Julius Agricola, the Roman lieutenant, in the time of Domitian, was the first that by adhorting the Britons publicly, and helping them privately, won them to build houses for themselves, temples for the gods, and courts for justice, to bring up the noblemen's children in good letters and humanity, and to apparel themselves Roman-like, whereas before (for the most part) they went naked, painting their bodies, etc., as all the Roman writers have observed.

True it is, I confess, that afterwards many cities and towns in Britain, under the government of the Romans, were walled with stone and baked bricks or tiles, as Richborrow or Ryptacester, in the Isle of Thanet, until the channel altered his course, beside Sandwich in Kent; Verulamium, beside St. Albans, in Hertfordshire; Cilcester in Hampshire ; Wroxcester in Shropshire; Kencester in Herefordshire, three miles from Hereford town; Ribcester, seven miles above Preston, on the water of Rible;