It soon became a populous
place, for when in A.D. 61 Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, stung by
the insults and injuries she and her daughters had received at the hands
of the Romans, raised her own and the neighbouring tribes to take
vengeance on their oppressors and
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies;
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary;
Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodune.
It is recorded that no less than seventy thousand fell in these three
places and the villages around them.
But her vengeance, sharp and sudden, was not allowed to pass unpunished
by the Romans, and Suetonius Paulinus, hurrying from North Wales, though
too late to save the three towns, utterly routed the forces of Boadicea
somewhere between London and Colchester.
After this Verulamium became once more a prosperous town, inhabited
partly by Romans, partly by Britons, who under Roman influence embraced
the civilization and adopted the customs of their conquerors. By whom
Christianity was first introduced into Britain we do not know; probably
it was brought from Gaul. In the reign of Diocletian a great persecution
of the Christians arose throughout the Roman empire.
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