ROMANO-BRITISH STAFFORDSHIRE DURING the period of the Roman occupation of Britain there were no districts which correspond to our present counties. Neither the boundaries of the British tribes nor those of the Roman administrative areas, as far as we know them, agree exactly with existing county boundaries. 1 At the time of the Roman invasion the greater part of Staffordshire was most probably inhabited by the Cornavii, a British tribe whose territory, we learn from Ptolemy, writing about A.D. 1 20, included Deva (Chester), and Viroconium (Wroxeter). 2 The Roman occupation under the Emperor Claudius began in A.D. 43 ; at first the subjugation of the country was comparatively easy. A strong foot-hold was obtained in Kent and Essex, and then the army was formed into three divisions, the Second Legion going south-west towards Somerset and Devon, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions north-west towards Shrews- bury and Chester, and the Ninth Legion north towards Lincoln. Professor Haverfield, in writing of this period, divides Britain into two districts ; s the lowlands, comprising the southern, south-western, and eastern districts up to the Humber he describes as civilian ; whilst the uplands, including the northern and western districts, he describes as military. The former, including probably the southern and middle parts of Staffordshire, was occupied by A.D. 47 or 48, and the latter, possibly comprising the northern part of the county, which partakes of the characteristics of Derbyshire, was subjugated about A.D. 48 or shortly afterwards. There can be little doubt that at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, Staffordshire was woodland or waste, and thinly populated. For this reason the Romano-British period as regards this district has little history. The county is mostly hilly. In the north it rises in places to 1,500 ft. ; in the middle it is undulating and was formerly forest ; to the south it is again hilly. By the Romans it would have been thought unattractive and inhos- pitable, and it therefore became to them merely a portion of territory through which roads and waterways passed across Britain. Except in the extreme north of the county few, if any, Roman remains have been found away from the great highways the roads and the rivers. 1 Much of the information contained in this article has been taken from Professor Haverfield's contribu- tions on ' Roman Remains ' to the volumes of this series. ' Ptolemy, Geographic (ed. Firmin Didot, 1883), i, 99. There is no satisfactory evidence that the Cornavii also inhabited Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and part of Derbyshire, as stated by Camden, Horsley, and Baxter. See as to this point Camden, Brit. (ed. Gough) ; Horsley, Brit. Rom. 368 ; Baxter, Glossarium Antiqultatum Brit. (1709), 73 ; Haverfield, in V.C..H. Warw. i, 229. 3 V.C.H. Derb. i, 192. 183
