Part 104

"During the reign of Gallienus [A. D. 260-268] … the pirate fleets of the Franks infested the British seas, and it became needful to have a fleet to protect the coast. The command of this fleet had been conferred on Carausius, a Menapian by birth; but he was suspected of conniving at piracy, in order that he might enrich himself by becoming a sharer in their booty, when they returned laden with plunder. To save himself, therefore, from punishment, he usurped the imperial power, A. D. 288, and reigned over Britain for seven years. A vast number of his coins struck in Britain have been preserved, so many that the history of Carausius has been written from his medals. He was slain at length by his minister Allectus, who usurped his power. The Franks [as allies of Allectus] had well-nigh established their power over the south portion of Britain when it was broken by Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great, who defeated Allectus in a decisive battle, in which that usurper was slain. … Allectus held the government of Britain for three years. Many of his coins are found."

_H. M. Scarth, Roman Britain, chapter 10._

ALSO IN: _T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 4._

BRITAIN: A. D. 323-337. Constantine's Organization.

Under the scheme of government designed by Diocletian and amended by Constantine, "Britain formed part of a vast pro-consulate, extending from Mount Atlas to the Caledonian deserts, and was governed by the Gallic prefect, through a 'vicar' or deputy at York. The island was divided into five new provinces. … Britain was under the orders of the Count of Britain, assisted by the subordinate officers. The Duke of Britain commanded in the north. The Count of the Saxon Shore, governed the 'Maritime Tract' and provided for the defence of the southeastern coast. The Saxon Shore on the coast of Britain must not be mistaken for the Saxon Shore on the opposite coast of France, the headquarters of which were the harbour of Boulogne. The names of the several provinces into which Britain was divided are given in the 'Notitia,' viz:

1. Britannia Prima, which included all the south and west of England, from the estuary of the Thames to that of the Severn.

2. Britannia Secunda, which included the Principality of Wales, bounded by the Severn on the east and the Irish Channel on the west.

3. Flavia Cæsariensis,—all the middle portion of Britain, from the Thames to the Humber and the· estuary of the Dee.

4. Maxima Cæsariensis,—the Brigantian territory, lying between the estuaries of the Humber and Dee, and the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus.

5. Valentia,—the most northern portion, lying between the barrier of Hadrian and that of Antoninus."

_H. M. Scarth, Roman Britain, chapter 10._

Britain: A. D. 367-370. Deliverance By Theodosius.

The distracted condition of affairs in the Roman Empire that soon followed the death of Constantine, which was relieved by Julian for a brief term, and which became worse at his death, proved especially ruinous to Roman Britain. The savage tribes of Caledonia—the Picts, now beginning to be associated with the Scots from Ireland—became bolder from year to year in their incursions, until they marched across the whole extent of Britain. "Their path was marked by cruelties so atrocious, that it was believed at the time and recorded by St. Jerome that they lived on human flesh. London, even, was threatened by them, and the whole island, which, like all the other provinces of the Empire, had lost every spark of military virtue, was incapable of opposing any resistance to them. Theodosius, a Spanish officer, and father of the great man of the same name who was afterwards associated in the Empire, was charged by Valentinian with the defence of Britain. He forced the Scots to fall back (A. D. 367-370), but without having been able to bring them to an engagement."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 5._

"The splendour of the cities and the security of the fortifications were diligently restored by the paternal care of Theodosius, who with a strong hand confined the trembling Caledonians to the northern angle of the island, and perpetuated, by the name and settlement of the new province of Valentia, the glories of the reign of Valentinian."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 25. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

BRITAIN: A. D. 383-388. Revolt of Maximus.

In 383, four years after Theodosius the Great had been associated in the Roman sovereignty by the young Emperor Gratian, and placed on the throne of the East, the generous Gratian lost his own throne, and his life, through a revolt that was organized in Britain. "One Maximus, a Spaniard by birth, occupying a high official position in that province, forced on step by step into insurrection, by a soldiery and a people of whom he appears to have been the idol, raised the standard of revolt in the island, and passed over into Gaul, attended by a large multitude,—130,000 men and 70,000 women, says Zosimus, the Byzantine historian. This colony, settling in the Armorican peninsula, gave it the name of Brittany, which it has since retained. The rebel forces were soon victorious over the two Emperors who had agreed to share the Roman throne [Gratian and his boy-brother Valentinian who divided the sovereignty of the West between them, while Theodosius ruled the East]. Gratian they slew at Lyons; Valentinian they speedily expelled from Italy. … Theodosius adopted the cause of his brother Emperor" and overthrew Maximus (see ROME: A. D. 379-395).

_J. G. Sheppard, Fall of Rome, lecture 5._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 27. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

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BRITAIN: A. D. 407. The Usurpation Of Constantine.

"The Roman soldiers in Britain, seeing that the Empire was falling to pieces under the feeble sway of Honorius, and fearing lest they, too, should soon he ousted from their dominion in the island (part of which was already known as the Saxon Shore) clothed three usurpers successively with the imperial purple [A. D. 407], falling, as far as social position was concerned, lower and lower in their choice each time. The last and least ephemeral of these rulers was a private soldier named Constantine, and chosen for no other reason but his name, which was accounted lucky, as having been already borne by a general who had been carried by a British army to supreme dominion."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 5._

The usurper Constantine soon led his legions across the channel into Gaul, then ravaged by the Vandals, Sueves, Alans and Burgundians who passed the Rhine in 406. He was welcomed with joy by the unhappy people who found themselves abandoned to the barbarians. Some successes which the new Constantine had, in prudent encounters with detached parties of the German invaders, were greatly magnified, and gave prestige to his cause. He was still more successful, for a time, in buying the precarious friendship of some tribes of the enemy, and made, on the whole, a considerable show of dominion in Gaul during two or three years. The seat of his government was established at Arles, to which city the offices and court of the Roman Prefect of Gaul had retreated from Trèves in 402. With the help of a considerable army of barbarian auxiliaries (a curious mixture of Scots, Moors and Marcomanni) he extended his sovereignty over Spain. He even extorted from the pusillanimous court at Ravenna a recognition of his usurped royalty, and promised assistance to Honorius against the Goths. But the tide of fortune presently turned. The lieutenant of Constantine in Spain, Count Gerontius, became for some reason disaffected and crowned a new usurper, named Maximus. In support of the latter he attacked Constantine and shut him up in Arles. At the same time, the Emperor Honorius, at Ravenna, having made peace with the Goths, sent his general Constantius against the Gallo-British usurper. Constantius, approaching Arles, found it already besieged by Gerontius. The latter was abandoned by his troops, and fled, to be slain soon afterwards. Arles capitulated to the representative of the great name which Honorius still bore, as titular Imperator of Rome. Constantine was sent to Ravenna, and put to death on the way (A. D. 411).

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 31. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALSO IN: _P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapter 10._

BRITAIN: A. D. 410. Abandoned By The Romans.

"Up to the moment … when the Imperial troops quitted Britain, we see them able easily to repel the attacks of its barbarous assailants. When a renewal of their inroads left Britain weak and exhausted at the accession of the Emperor Honorius, the Roman general Stilicho renewed the triumphs which Theodosius had won. The Pict was driven back afresh, the Saxon boats chased by his galleys as far as the Orkneys, and the Saxon Shore probably strengthened with fresh fortresses. But the campaign of Stilicho was the last triumph of the Empire in its western waters. The struggle Rome had waged so long drew in fact to its end; at the opening of the fifth century her resistance suddenly broke down; and the savage mass of barbarism with which she had battled broke in upon the Empire. … The strength of the Empire, broken everywhere by military revolts, was nowhere more broken than in Britain, where the two legions which remained quartered at Richborough and York set up more than once their chiefs as Emperors and followed them across the channel in a march upon Rome. The last of these pretenders, Constantine, crossed over to Gaul in 407 with the bulk of the soldiers quartered in Britain, and the province seems to have been left to its own defence; for it was no longer the legionaries, but 'the people of Britain' who, 'taking up arms,' repulsed a new onset of the barbarians. … They appealed to Honorius to accept their obedience, and replace the troops. But the legions of the Empire were needed to guard Rome itself: and in 410 a letter of the Emperor bade Britain provide for its own government and its own defence. Few statements are more false than those which picture the British provincials as cowards, or their struggle against the barbarian as a weak and unworthy one. Nowhere, in fact, through the whole circuit of the Roman world, was so long and so desperate a resistance offered to the assailants of the Empire. … For some thirty years after the withdrawal of the legions the free province maintained an equal struggle against her foes. Of these she probably counted the Saxons as still the least formidable. …. It was with this view that Britain turned to what seemed the weakest of her assailants, and strove to find … troops whom she could use as mercenaries against the Pict."

_J. R. Green, The Making of England, introduction._

ALSO IN: _J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 1, pages 57-66._

BRITAIN: A. D. 446. The Last Appeal To Rome.

"Yet once again a supplicating embassy was sent to the Roman general Ætius, during his third consulship, in the year 446. … Ætius was unable to help them."

_J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, page 63._

"The date of the letters of appeal is fixed by the form of their address: 'The groans of the Britons to Ætius for the third time Consul. The savages drive us to the sea and the sea casts us back upon the savages: so arise two kinds of death, and we are either drowned or slaughtered.' The third Consulate of Aetius fell in A. D. 446, a year memorable in the West as the beginning of a profound calm which preceded the onslaught of Attila. The complaint of Britain has left no trace in the poems which celebrated the year of repose; and our Chronicles are at any rate wrong when they attribute its rejection to the stress of a war with the Huns. It is possible, indeed, that the appeal was never made, and that the whole story represents nothing but a rumour current in the days of Gildas among the British exiles in Armorica."

_C. Elton, Origins of English History, chapter 12._

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BRITAIN: A. D. 449-633. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473, to 547-633.

BRITAIN: 6th CENTURY. The Unsubdued Britons.

"The Britons were soon restricted to the western parts of the island, where they maintained themselves in several small states, of which those lying to the east yielded more and more to Germanic influence; the others protected by their mountains, preserved for a considerable time a gradually decreasing independence. … In the south-west we meet with the powerful territory of Damnonia, the kingdom of Arthur, which bore also the name of West Wales. Damnonia, at a later period, was limited to Dyvnaint, or Devonshire, by the separation of Cernau, or Cornwall. The districts called by the Saxons those of the Sumorsætas, of the Thornsætas (Dorsetshire). and the Wiltsætas were lost to the kings of Dyvnaint at an early period; though for centuries afterwards a large British population maintained itself in those parts among the Saxon settlers, as well as among the Defnsætas, long after the Saxon conquest of Dyvnaint, who for a considerable time preserved to the natives of that shire the appellation of the 'Welsh kind.' Cambria (Cymru), the country which at the present day we call Wales, was divided into several states." The chief of these early states was Venedotia (Gwynedd), the king of which was supreme over the other states. Among these latter were Dimetia (Dyved), or West Wales; Powys, which was east of Gwynedd and Snowdon mountain; Gwent (Monmouthshire) or South-east Wales, the country of the Silures. "The usages and laws of the Cambrians were in all these states essentially the same. An invaluable and venerable monument of them, although of an age in which the Welsh had long been subject to the Anglo-Saxons, and had adopted many of their institutions and customs, are the laws of the king Howel Dda, who reigned in the early part of the 10th century. … The partition of Cambria into several small states is not, as has often been supposed, the consequence of a division made by king Rodri Mawr, or Roderic the Great, among his sons. … Of Dyfed, during the first centuries after the coming of the Saxons, we know very little; but with regard to Gwynedd, which was in constant warfare with Northumbria and Mercia, our information is less scanty: of Gwent, also, as the bulwark of Dimetia, frequent mention occurs. On the whole we are less in want of a mass of information respecting the Welsh, than of accuracy and precision in that which we possess. … An obscurity still more dense than that over Wales involves the district lying to the north of that country, comprised under the name of Cumbria."

_J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 1, page 119-122._

See CUMBRIA AND STRATH-CLYDE.

BRITAIN: A. D. 635. Defeat Of The Welsh By The English Of Bernicia.

See HEVENFIELD, BATTLE OF THE.

BRITAIN: End----------

BRITAIN, GREAT: ADOPTION Of The Name For The United Kingdoms Of England And Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707.

BRITAIN, Roman Walls In.

See ROMAN WALLS IN BRITAIN.

BRITANNIA, The Origin Of The Name.

"Many are the speculations which have been started as to the etymology of the word Britannia, and among the later ones have been some of the most extraordinary. Yet surely it is not one of those philological difficulties which we need despair of solving. Few persons will question that the name Britannia is connected with the name Britanni, in the same way as Germania, Gallia, Graecia, &c., with Germani, Galli, Graeci, &c., and it is not unreasonable to assume that Britanni was originally nothing more than the Latinized form of the Welsh word Brython, a name which we find given in the Triads to one of the three tribes who first colonized Britain. … From the Welsh 'brith' and Irish 'brit,' parti-coloured, may have come Brython, which on this hypothesis would signify the painted men. … As far then as philology is concerned, there seems to be no objection to our assuming Brython, and therefore also Britanni, to signify the painted men. How this Celtic name first came to denote the inhabitants of these islands is a question, the proper answer to which lies deeper than is generally supposed. … The 'Britannic Isles' is the oldest name we find given to these islands in the classical writers. Under this title Polybius (3. 57) refers to them in connection with the tin-trade, and the well-known work on the Kosmos (c. 3) mentions 'The Britannic Isles, Albion and Ierne.' … But in truth neither the authorship nor the age of this last-named work has been satisfactorily settled, and therefore we cannot assert that the phrase 'The Britannic Isles' came into use before the second century B. C. The name Britannia first occurs in the works of Cæsar and was not improbably invented by him."

_E. Guest, Origines Celticæ, volume 2, chapter 1._

The etymology contended for by Dr. Guest is scouted by Mr. Rhys, on principles of Celtic phonology. He, on the contrary, traces relations between the name Brython and "the Welsh vocables 'bethyn,' cloth, and its congeners," and concludes that it signified "a clothed or cloth-clad people."

_J. Rhys, Celtic Britain, chapter 6._

BRITANNIA PRIMA AND SECUNDA.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 323-337.

BRITISH COLUMBIA: Aboriginal inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ATHAPASCAN FAMILY.

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BRITISH COLUMBIA: A. D. 1858-1871. Establishment of provincial government. Union with the Dominion of Canada.

"British Columbia, the largest of the Canadian provinces, cannot be said to have had any existence as a colony until 1858. Previous to that year provision had been made by a series of Acts for extending the Civil and Criminal Laws of the Courts of Lower and Upper Canada over territories not within any province, but otherwise the territory was used as a hunting ground of the Hudson's Bay Company. The disputes and difficulties that arose from the influx of miners owing to the gold discoveries in 1856, resulted in the revocation of the licence of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the passing of the Imperial Act 21 & 22 Vic., c. 99, to provide for the government of British Columbia. … Sir James Douglas was appointed Governor and by his commission he was authorised to make laws, institutions and ordinances for the peace, order and good government of British Columbia, by proclamation issued under the public seal of the colony. … The Governor continued to legislate by proclamation until 1864, when his proclamations gave way to Ordinances passed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council. … Up to this time the Governor of British Columbia was also Governor of the neighbouring island of Vancouver. Vancouver's Island is historically an older colony than British Columbia. Though discovered in 1592 it remained practically unknown to Europeans for two centuries, and it was not until 1849, when the island was granted to the Hudson's Bay Company, that a Governor was appointed. … In 1865 the legislature of the island adopted a series of resolutions in favour of union with British Columbia, and by the Imperial Act 29 & 30 Vic. (i), c. 67, the two colonies were united. … By an Order in Council dated the 16th day of May, 1871, British Columbia was declared to be a province of the Dominion [see CANADA: A. D. 1867, and 1869-1873] from the 20th of July, 1871."

_J. E. C. Munro, The Constitution of Canada, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, volume 27: British Columbia._

BRITISH COLUMBIA: A. D. 1872. Settlement Of The San Juan Water Boundary Dispute.

See SAN JUAN OR NORTHWESTERN WATER BOUNDARY QUESTION.

BRITISH COLUMBIA: End----------

BRITISH EAST AFRICA AND SOUTH AFRICA COMPANIES.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

BRITISH HONDURAS.

See CENTRAL AMERICA: A. D. 1821-1871.

BRITONS, OR BRITHONS.

See CELTS; ALSO, BRITANNIA; and BRITAIN: 6TH CENTURY.

BRITONS OF CUMBRIA AND STRATHCLYDE.

See CUMBRIA.

BRITTANY, OR BRITANNY: In The Roman Period.

See ARMORICA; also, VENETI OF WESTERN GAUL.

BRITTANY: A. D. 383. Alleged Origin Of The British Settlement And Name.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 383-388.

BRITTANY: A. D. 409. Independence Asserted.

At the time that the British island practically severed its connection with the expiring Roman Empire (about 409) the Britons of the continent,—of the Armorican province, or modern Brittany,—followed the example. "They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free government was established among a people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary will of a master."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 31. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

"From this time, perhaps, we ought to date that isolation of Brittany from the politics of the rest of France which has not entirely disappeared even at the present day."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 2, chapter 3._

The Armoricans, however, were found fighting by the side of the Romans and the Goths, against the Huns, on the great day at Chalons.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

BRITTANY: A. D. 818-912. The Breyzad Kingdom. Subjection To The Norman Dukes.