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The last Roman soldiers left England in 407AD. In 410AD it is said that the people of Britain sent a request to the Roman
Emperor Honorius asking for help defending the country. It is said that the emperor wrote back saying that the Britons should 'look to their own defences'.
In other words, you’re on your own Brits. This may not have been the best way to communicate this as very few people could read but it was a nice idea and not
too surprising as at the time Honorius was trapped in Ravenna by an army of Visigoths and, later that year, was unable to prevent these nomadic tribes from
completely destroying Rome.
It is this date, 410AD, that historians usually agree saw the end of Roman Britain, although Roman institutions and their way of life stayed around
for some time.
So, the people of England now had to look after themselves. They didn’t have anyone to tell them what to do but they didn’t have anyone to protect
them either. What would happen? At first the answer was nothing much happened. Life was less organised, people no longer had to pay taxes to Rome, and in many
ways things went back about 400 years. Can you imagine that happening now? The period that followed is sometimes called the Dark Ages because the lights went
out when the Romans took the bulbs. No not really, but it is called the Dark Ages. There were, of course, no light bulbs for another 1,500 years.
Some Romans stayed behind. Some of these had been governors of Roman towns and some were soldiers who had left the army. There were also some
soldiers who had married English women. But no one knew how to govern a big country like England.
First of all, the people left the towns and went back to living in the country. The Roman towns had been for trading and entertainment and there
was nobody left to trade with and no entertainment. People stopped using coins and went back to bartering. Bartering is when you exchange goods with someone
rather than pay for them. Roman buildings started to fall down. We are also now back in the time of “abouts” as there is very little written history for us
to follow. Accounts do appear but they are written by people who lived over 200 years later. How accurate would it be if you now had to write a history of
England in 1815 and you had no books to read, the only information being a few snippets of writing and what your great, great, great grandfather told his son
who told his son who told his son who told his son who told you.
What we do know is that the Romano British people were still being attacked by the Picts in the north and Celtic raiders in the east and south. These raiders were made up of different tribes who came from the area we now call Germany and Denmark. It all happened gradually over many years but things were changing from the ordered life under Roman rule.
Forward to 449AD
