Government
For thousands of years, the Britons had been banded together in tribes, each with its own king. The Romans changed the system completely. They introduced one ruler for the whole of England, Scotland and Wales. There was now a central government; and laws that had to be obeyed from one end of the land to the others. These laws were administered by courts of justice, a word that Britons had never heard before. The essence of it was that a man was innocent unless he was proven guilty. However Romans did was to involve the conquered tribes in the administration of the province. They set up administrative centres keeping in mind traditional tribal territories, and involved the tribal aristocracies in the decision making process. This was standard Roman practice, and a wise one. They made the conquered people responsible for their own administration within a Roman framework.
Like the other provinces of the Roman Empire, Britain was governed by a propraetor, who held office for a period of about five years. He was usually a distinguished soldier, and during the first two centuries it was rare for a governor not to have to deal with at least one rising by the conquered Britons, or an invasion from the north of England, which the Romans never succeeded in subduing completely.
Next to the propraetor came the procurator, an independent official responsible for the financial administration, and answerable only to the government in Rome. In the end, the Roman policy was to encourage the inhabitants of the lands they conquered to run their own affairs as far as possible, but to do so on Roman lines. |