country-houses, and has hardly any 'hams'.]

[Footnote 4: Professor Vinogradoff, _Growth of the Manor_ (chap. ii),
argues strongly for the existence of Celtic land-tenures besides the
Roman 'villa' system. 'There was room (he suggests) for all sorts of
conditions, from almost exact copies of Roman municipal corporations and
Italian country-houses to tribal arrangements scarcely coloured by a
thin sprinkling of imperial administration' (p. 83). As will be seen,
this is not improbable. But I can find no definite proof of it. If
northern Gaul were better known to us, it might provide a decisive
analogy. But the Gaulish evidence itself seems at present disputable.]

CHAPTER VII

CHRONOLOGY OF THE ROMANIZATION

From this consideration of the evidence available to illustrate the
Romanization of Britain, I pass to the inquiry how far history helps us
to trace out the chronology of the process. A few facts and
probabilities emerge as guides. Intercourse between south-eastern
Britain and the Roman world had already begun before the Roman conquest
in A.D. 43. Latin words, as I have said above (p. 24), had begun to
appear on the native British coinage, and Arretine pottery had found its
way to such places as Foxton in Cambridgeshire, Alchester in
Oxfordshire, and Southwark in Surrey.[1] The establishment of a
_municipium_ at Verulamium (St. Albans) sometime before A.D. 60, and
probably even before A.D. 50,[2] points the same way. The peculiar
status of _municipium_ was granted in the early Empire especially to
native provincial towns which had become Romanized without official
Roman action or settlement of Roman soldiers or citizens, and which had,
as it were, merited municipal privileges. It is quite likely that such
Romanization had begun at Verulam before the Roman conquest, and formed
the justification for the early grant of such privileges. Certainly the
whole lowland area, as far west as Exeter and Shrewsbury, and as far
north as the Humber, was conquered before Claudius died, and
Romanization may have commenced in it at once.

[Footnote 1: Babington, _Anc. Cambridgeshire_, p. 64; E. Krueger, _Westd.
Korr.-Blatt_, 1904, p. 181; my note, _Proc. Soc. Antiq. Lond._, xxi. 461
_Journal of Roman Studies_, i. 146. Mr. H.B. Walters has dealt with the
Southwark piece in the _Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiq. Society_,
xii. 107, but with some errors. The Alchester piece may be later than
A.D. 43.]

[Footnote 2: The g