But the great legacies of Rome to Britain were the idea of monarchy,[109] the centralisation of authority, and the municipal government, the position of the ‘civitas’ or city as the centre of local authority to the surrounding territory. In provincial Britain the local government under the civil staff of the Romans was vested in the cities with their senate or ‘curia,’ the ‘decuriones’[110] which composed it, and the magistrates elected by them. It was to them Honorius addressed his letters, and when the Roman civilians were driven out they succeeded to their authority, each city forming the centre of a small territorial rule. Of the provincial Britons we find clear indications of a marked distinction between these two classes: the first consisting of those who considered themselves more peculiarly Romans, and bore the impress of their language and habits, among whom were also to be found the descendants of the Roman soldiers who had become naturalised prior to the termination of the Roman government in Britain, and remained in the island. There were in fact three descriptions of persons who might be termed Romans. There was, first, the Roman army, consisting to a great extent of barbarian auxiliaries, parties of whom remained stationed at the same places during the greater part of their occupation of the island. There was, secondly, the civil government, which, from the time of Constantine, if not from that of Diocletian, had been distinct from the military organisation, and had imposed upon the provinces a numerous and oppressive body of civil officials, principal and subordinate; and there were, thirdly, the descendants of those of the military who had received benefices or grants of land, or had connected themselves by marriage with the natives, and were thus naturalised among them. The Roman troops had been withdrawn by the various usurpers who assumed the purple in the island. The civil government had been expelled by the people, by whom, in common with all the provincials of the Roman Empire, it was detested and reluctantly submitted to; but the third class remained, and naturally became the leaders of those provincials who had become, as it were, Romanised. This class of the provincial Britons would be found mainly in that part of the province longest subjected and most easily accessible to Roman influence, bounded by the Humber and the Severn, and in the eastern and more level portion of the territory between the Humber and the Firths of Forth and Clyde, where the proper frontier of the province existed.