Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day, so I wondered how Patrick’s world view might have been affected by the times he lived in. According to what I read, Patrick was from a fairly wealthy family-he was kidnapped by Irish pirates (presumably, Roman rule was breaking down).
Was Patrick’s Britain a place of much strife and instability?
The last Roman soldiers left in AD 410-did things collapse all of a sudden?
“much strife and instability” pretty much sums it up.
To answer your second question, the current consensus among historians is that the end of Roman rule in Britain wasn’t a single event but a process lasting decades, in which peripheral regions slipped out of control and the Empire gradually accepted their loss rather than expend scare resources trying to get them back.
From what little historical evidence we have, Irish (and Pictics and Saxon) piracy and rading had become serious by the mid-4th century. In 367 there was a major invasion from the North which broke through the defences (Hadrians Wall); the Empire sent reinforcements from the Continent and order was restored.
Then in 383, the Roman commander in Britain, Magnus Maximus, revolted and led the troops from Britain on a campaign against Rome (where he briefly made himself Emperor of the West). Most of the Roman garrisons in the north and west seem to have been abandoned around this time and the Irish raiders took full advantage.
Maximus was defeated and killed, the new Emperor sort of re-established Roman control over at least southern Britain and may have sent troops and ships to repel the Picts in the 390s. But the Western Empire itself had major problems after the battle of Adrianople in 387 and Britain was nobody’s priority.
Raids continued, the economy declined (the last Roman coins minted in Britain date to the early 400s) and in 407 another usurper, Constantine III, took what troops remained in Britain to Gaul in his attempt to claim the Empire. That was pretty much it for the Roman military presence or centralised Roman government.
Local Roman government lasted longer - in some places recognisably Roman urban life seems to have continued into the mid-5th century or even longer. Ultimately the towns were sacked or abandoned and the Romano-British successor states became increasingly Celtic and tribalised.
So for northern Britain in Patrick’s time, if it wasn’t the Irish it was the Picts, if it wasn’t the Picts it was the Scots, if it wasn’t the Scots it was a Roman civil war and if it wasn’t officially civil war it was disputes between Roman officials, local leaders and the Romano-Celtic tribes, possibly with peasant revolts thrown into the mix. An interesting time, indeed.
That was very interesting. Thank you for that, merrick.
I am a big fan of Rosemary Sutcliff and her “Eagle of the Ninth” series, so I’m always happy to learn more about Roman life in Britain.