Julius Cæsar’s invasion of Britain seems to have proved upon the whole unsuccessful; for he withdrew to the continent, without being able to effect its subjugation, or to retain the conquests which he is supposed to have made; which may be thought to furnish a pretty strong argument in favour of the independent spirit, and high military character of the British nation at that time. Nor does it appear that the Romans ever attempted to give our ancestors any further disturbance afterward, till the reign of Claudius, whose general, _Aulus Plautius_, a person of senatorial dignity, was the first that established the power of that people, or gave them a firm footing in this island. This was near a hundred years after the retreat or departure of Julius Cæsar; and the success of Plautius is said to have been chiefly or greatly owing to the bitter dissentions which then raged among the British chieftains, some of whom had invited the Romans hither, and afterward joined them against their own country-men. Claudius himself came over sometime after, and completed the conquest of a great part of South Britain, including, it seems, the country of the _Iceni_, which comprehended the present counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, with most, if not the whole of those of Cambridge and Huntingdon, and probably some part of Lincolnshire. So that the parts adjoining the Fens became subject to the Romans among their earliest acquisitions in Britain. The inhabitants of these parts are also said to have made the least resistance to them, at first, of any of the British States, and therefore to have been for sometime more highly favoured by them than any of the rest. Claudius at his departure from this island, which is said to have been in the year 43 of the Christian Era, left here a considerable force under Plautius, Vespasian (afterwards emperor) and other experienced and able Generals, who were succeeded by others, no way their inferiors, in experience, ability, or military fame; among whom were Ostorius Scapula, Suetonius Paulinus, and Julius Agricola. Besides Julius Cæsar, Claudius, and Vespasian, several others of the Roman emperors are said to have spent some part of their time in this island; and particular Hadrian, Severus, Constantius Chlorus, and his son Constantine the Great. The latter is supposed to have been born here, and his mother is said to have been a Briton. His father, as well as his predecessor Severus, died at York, a place of no small consequence and celebrity in those times.