s,
on the Welsh frontier, the most advanced town was at Wroxeter
(Viroconium), near Shrewsbury, and the furthest country-house an
isolated dwelling at Llantwit, in Glamorgan.[2] In the south-west the
last house was near Lyme Regis, the last town at Exeter.[3] These are
the limits of the Romanized area. Outside of them, the population cannot
have acquired much Roman character, nor can it have been numerous enough
to form more than a subsidiary factor in our problem. But within these
limits were towns and villages and country-houses and farms, a large
population, and a developed and orderly life.

[Footnote 1: For further details see the Victoria County Histories of
_Northamptonshire_, i. 159, and _Derbyshire_, i. 191. To save frequent
references, I may say here that much of the evidence for the following
paragraphs is to be found in my articles on Romano-British remains
printed in the volumes of this History. I am indebted to its publishers
for leave to reproduce several illustrations from its pages. For others
I refer my readers to the History itself.]

[Footnote 2: See my _Military Aspects of Roman Wales_, notes 60 and 82.
There was some sort of town life at Carmarthen.]

[Footnote 3: The Roman remains discovered west of Exeter are few and
mostly later than A.D. 250. No town or country-house or farm or stretch
of roadway has ever been found here. The list of discoveries includes
only one early settlement on Plymouth harbour, another near Bodmin, of
small size, and a third, equally small and of uncertain date, on Padstow
harbour; some scanty vestiges of tin-mining, principally late; two
milestones (if milestones they be) of the early fourth century, the one
at Tintagel church and the other at St. Hilary; and some scattered
hoards and isolated bits. Portions of the country were plainly
inhabited, but the inhabitants did not learn Roman ways, like those who
lived east of the Exe. Even tin-mining was not pursued very actively
till a comparatively late period, though the Bodmin settlement may be
connected with tin-works close by.]

[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE CIVIL AND MILITARY DISTRICTS OF BRITAIN.]

Secondly, the distribution of civilian life, even in the lowlands, was
singularly uneven. It is not merely that some districts were the special
homes of wealthier residents. We have also to conceive of some parts as
densely peopled and of some as hardly inhabited. Portions of Kent,
Sussex, and Somerset are set thick with c