Acts, had a
great deal of money invested in Britain. Juvenal brings a British king
into his verse, and Richborough oysters. Josephus[21] tells us that Titus
made use of the Britons, as a telling illustration in his final speech to
the desperate Jews:--"Pray what greater obstacle is there than the wall of
the Ocean, with which the Britons are encompassed? And yet they bow before
the arms of the Romans."

Those are probably sufficient indications of the kind of evidence we have.
We know, too, that the Roman troops came and went; and we may be sure that
they made Britain and the strange things they had seen here a frequent
subject of conversation. We cannot doubt that St. Paul, in his enforced
intercourse with the soldiery at Rome, learned all he could about the
distant parts of the world, which only the Roman armies had visited. Nay,
we in London may go further than that. Seeing that Nero recalled from
Britain the victorious Suetonius in 61, and that St. Paul lived with Roman
soldiers in all probability from 61 to 63, we may imagine that some
soldier or other described to St. Paul that terrible day on which
Suetonius made up his mind that he must leave London to its fate. You
remember the account of Tacitus[22], so telling in its studied brevity. It
is, I think, the first definite appearance of London on the stage of
history. The occasion was the revolt of Boadicea, to retain the familiar
incorrectness of the name. Colchester had fallen, all the Romans there
being slaughtered. The ninth legion had been attacked and routed by the
Britons, and all the infantry killed. Many a gallant fight no doubt in the
thick woods, like that which Wilson and his comrades fought last
month[23]. The governor of the province fled to Gaul. Verulam fell, with
great slaughter. There was no taking captive, no selling into slavery. The
Britons made sure work; they burned, they tortured, they crucified. One
man of the Romans kept his head, or all would have been massacred. With a
constancy which made men marvel, Suetonius marched through the midst of
foes to the relief of London--London not then illustrious as a colony, but
more famous than any other city in the land for the number of its
merchants and the abundance of its merchandise. Should he make London his
centre of defence? He looked at the small number of his soldiers: he
thought of the destruction of the ninth legion. He determined to leave
London to its fate. Tears and prayers could not m