interesting article on the 'end of Roman Britain'

[Imperial Dave]

local families will always rule informally in the provinces with the very highest order controlled by the state. when the state control is removed, the lower orders move up a few layers. I think island isolation helped (or hindered) Britain in their 'break' with Rome

[Anton]

That's a nice, succinct way of putting it.  Vortigern, who seems to have been real enough in so far as his descendants are identifiable, seems to have moved up to significant power.

[Imperial Dave]

a local strongman, landowner, decurion or even military commander but 'British' in nature

[aligern]

Interesting, Stephen. I do wonder how much tribal structure continues in the lowland zone. From conquest to abandonment is 350 to 400 years which is 10-15 generations which did see some major changes in social organisation...mind you we are not certain about pre Roman tribal organisation, even in Gaul. Do we know who 'owned' the land or the peopke? Were the 'Britons' independent small farmers with a familial clan connection to tribe, or were they in small groups with a leading family which then pledged an allegiance upwards and did the small groups own the land......this being the land of the Hollins!  When the Romans organised the tribal territories did the Hollin if the Hollins move to town? did he then assert Roman style ownership of common lands and convert his relatives into tenants? There are obvious parallels later in history for the concentration of rural power in the hands of the larger landowner. From Rome's point of view there is a desire to have the tribe demilitarised which I think happens in Gaul and Spain, though gradually as the Gauls are still semi competent at the time of the revolt of Vindex. Military ability is soon lost.
There is another ineluctable process of rural life, which Jim can elucidate, and that is crop failure. One imagines that in tribal society the leaders are responsible for aiding the poorer ones in times of hardship. This certainly appears to true of Arab tribes. However, with the advent of Roman legal and client relationship one can see that such free aid which incurs a debt of service is replaced by money aid which incurs commercial debt which in years of repeated hardship results in expropriation, conversion to tenancy or even slavery. As Rome expected the rich to collect taxes from the poor and pay them upwards, the nature of hardship generated debt has a monetary outcome. I believe such processes and the movement of the leaders to towns results in greater stratification and less tribal solidarity. That , combined with the demilitarisation of the mass of the tribe makes revolt less feasible.
As I understand it there is an eventual move of the rich back to living in in the countryside in their villas....a move to private riches and public squalor.  Hence , by the time that the Empire is failing the rich are in power over a depressed, disarmed peasantry ( OK a broad brush view) they maintain small groups of comitates for defence abd coercion, they have horses and weapons...well at least hunting weapons.....they relate to their local town as a centre for exchabge and tax collection, but these are diminished towns. People know that they belong to a tribal civitas with a name and maybe some traditions, but even that solidarity has been weakened by Christianity which has destroyed tribal gods which once provided a solidarity by being particular to the group. In this scenario tribe is very weak. Do e
we find tribe being cited as the actor in the lowland area in the fifth century? I recall that it is the civitas or the city that is spoken of? As said, at Dyrrham the three British kings are described by their city, rather than of X tribe. There is more tribal location in the frontier kingdoms such as the Votadini, but do the Welsh , North British or West British polities map to old tribal divisions and capitals?
My concern is that there is a route to an interpretation such as Laycock's that tribal, pre Roman Britain reasserts itself  and was always there, when actually, cities were created as centres for tribes in order to Romanise and control the tribes. Those cities survive as trade centres admin centres, bishoprics etc.
When the Imperial structure goes away the cities are keft as centres of administration, but there may by then be very little tribal about it, the city runs its area, or rather the people who run the area repair to the city vecause they used to. If there are forces that fight they are the men of the city, the guards of landowners who maintain a house in the city, the federates hired or granted land by the city, but nothing much to do with the tribe.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

The crop failure point is an interesting one.

When it comes to food supplies, various parties had 'preferred creditor' status and they would get whatever grain there was. The army would be one, and the cities the next. The peasantry actually growing the grain were likely to be 'legally' pillaged by tax gatherers and their armed escorts. Cities are not going to rein in the high handed official who successfully gets them the grain they need in a time of famine.

What we have to remember is that whilst the peasant might well have sold all his spare grain (which might be held with his landlord or some other figure too powerful for local officials to rob) each peasant would almost inevitably be sitting on a hidden stockpile of seed corn. In rough figures, a peasant would hold back about a quarter of this year's harvest to become the seed corn for next year. The authorities would have no hesitation in confiscating that.

So what may have happened is that the peasant lost his seed corn, and then had to buy back replacement grain from his landlord who was powerful enough to sit on stocks of it, at a higher price, going deeper into debt.

I often wonder whether the arguments for autumn or spring sowing of cereals boiled down to
"Autumn sowing, the grain is sowed, they cannot confiscate it."
"Spring sowing, at least you have the chance of eating your seed corn to get your family through the winter."

[Erpingham]

Crop seizure is an interesting question.  Roy is right that the army had, de jure or de facto, first call and they didn't really care about local economic sustainability - it was somebody else's problem.  The civitates needed some sustainability, so couldn't afford to starve all the local farmers.  Major landholders also didn't want peasants dying or deserting the land, though they may wish to gain control of the land.  What value is land with no-one to sow and reap for you?  Move onto post Roman times.  Could things actually be better for the peasant?  Yes, he faces off against local government and local gentry but not against a well-armed government force who didn't care whether he lived or died.

I'm also wondering about the role of clientage in the mix.  Roman society put huge store by clientage.  So this would give an alternative, or at least evolved, pattern of allegiance.  Given that the wealthy landowners probably are at least in part the same as they were in pre-Roman times, there will still be echoes of the tribal, but it wouldn't be the real driver.  Had tribal identity become more like it is in modern England - a matter of heritage and identity but not the political structure?

[Jim Webster]

Crop seizure is an interesting question.  Roy is right that the army had, de jure or de facto, first call and they didn't really care about local economic sustainability - it was somebody else's problem.  The civitates needed some sustainability, so couldn't afford to starve all the local farmers.  Major landholders also didn't want peasants dying or deserting the land, though they may wish to gain control of the land.  What value is land with no-one to sow and reap for you?  Move onto post Roman times.  Could things actually be better for the peasant?  Yes, he faces off against local government and local gentry but not against a well-armed government force who didn't care whether he lived or died.

I'm also wondering about the role of clientage in the mix.  Roman society put huge store by clientage.  So this would give an alternative, or at least evolved, pattern of allegiance.  Given that the wealthy landowners probably are at least in part the same as they were in pre-Roman times, there will still be echoes of the tribal, but it wouldn't be the real driver.  Had tribal identity become more like it is in modern England - a matter of heritage and identity but not the political structure?

given that the wealthy wouldn't get their crop seized, they would be the ones the peasant would have to turn to for seed corn. Two bad harvests would probably mean that the family was indebted beyond any hope of every paying off the debt and would be enough to turn a free tenant into a serf

[Anton]

I think Roy's question takes us to the hub of it - what of tribal structures in the lowlands.  First I'd say tribal tho' we all use the term can miss direct us. The social and legal system across Pre Roman Celtic Europe is pretty much the same so far as we can see from classical sources and that includes the lowlands.  The society has a hierarchy of kings, druids, nobles, bards and craftsmen that rests on free farmers who are clients of the fore going.  It is a society that can produce large forces of fierce infantry-the free farmers.  There are also slaves which we cannot say much about.

When we compare the glimpses of the social structures the classical writers give us with what we have from Gildas and early Brythonic, Irish and Welsh sources we get a fit. If, and I appreciate not many people are interested in doing so, we look at the surviving early legal texts and information contained in poems we start to be able to place our knowledge in context.  We can begin to see how it all worked.  It's what makes reading the work of Koch and Charles-Edwards so rewarding to read.

Once Rome is in charge it often works through the existing pre-Roman aristocracy who, as long as taxes are paid and noses kept clean, continue in place.  If we look at Gaul we can find aristos of senatorial rank (none in Britannia) who can still speak Celtic and are conversant with their 'tribal' identity and seemingly proud of it.  IIRC the Emperor Julian comes across a druid.  It looks as though the authority given by Rome has simply been added to the authority already possessed under the native system.  I'd expect lowland Britannia to be similar. 

At the start of our period we have a system in place, it is subordinated to the Roman system, at the end of our period Rome is gone and it seemingly re-emerges.  Presumably it survives because it was still useful through out to the native aristocracy in terms of fulfilling what Rome required of them.  That's my take on it although I'd stop short of saying we know.

[Jim Webster]

I'd wonder what proportion of the peasantry remained 'free farmers' to provide the fierce infantry. We seem to see a situation where throughout the empire the peasantry slipped into some sort of semi- or even un-free status.
It may be that the tribes on the periphery, Wales and the North, retained their greater number of warriors because they were more likely to be pastoralists and therefore not as easily reduced to serfdom

As an example of how rapidly Clan chiefs and landowners get get rid of warlike tenants look at how the Scots aristocracy disarmed and disposed of their tenants between 1750 and 1850

[Anton]

interesting that you should mention the Scots Highlanders Jim, I'm just reading Stevenson's biography of Alasdair Mac Colla Ciotagh which deals in some depth with dilemma of the Clan Chiefs trying to get the best out of two systems of authority.  I'm not sure its directly comparable but if it is then we should think of the British aristos as Campbells to a man.

The question of how many free farmers remained is important and probably it is in direct relation to how much land was still in the hands of the native aristos.  We know a lot of land was not.

I cannot bring to mind any British evidence for free farmers being reduced to un-free status in the late empire.  Though clearly slave taking was part and parcel of conquest and crushing rebellions and we have late evidence of slavery, Marwanad Cunedda for example.  That poem also refers to the men of Bryneich who I take as the free farmers.

Kent comes to mind where the struggle seems to have been fierce and where native custom seems to have survived, indicating free farmers.

[Jim Webster]

given the lack of evidence we have for British, I don't think we can take the negative
It's the same with Kent, was the struggle fierce because Kent had more free farmers or more foederate?

[Anton]

The struggle for Kent seems to have been fought between the native lords and their supporters on one side and the foederates on the other, both no doubt claiming legitimacy. Surely Kent would be as Romanised (whatever we think that means) as anywhere else in the lowlands. Yet there they are going toe to toe.

I thought Jim Storr's recent book where he attempts to read the fighting through examining earth works from the perspective of a military engineer useful in thinking about what happened in Kent.

[Jim Webster]

Remember that in other parts of the Empire, landowners maintained their own military or paramilitary forces. The American south shows that a slave owning society can be heavily militarized 
I've seen accounts from North Africa and Egypt where estates had considerable numbers of guards on their books, often trained and sometimes lead by men borrowed from the military

[Erpingham]

We should also remember that a large supply of free farmers isn't essential to a military system.  Unfree servants (ministerales) of great landowners developed as a military force somehow within the Frankish realms.  So peasantry tied in some way to landowners could have been called on to supply military force here.  Obviously, Francia and Britannia are not the same place but looking at how post-Roman Gaul developed can help in identifying possible actors and forces in post-Roman Britain.

[Jim Webster]

We should also remember that a large supply of free farmers isn't essential to a military system.  Unfree servants (ministerales) of great landowners developed as a military force somehow within the Frankish realms.  So peasantry tied in some way to landowners could have been called on to supply military force here.  Obviously, Francia and Britannia are not the same place but looking at how post-Roman Gaul developed can help in identifying possible actors and forces in post-Roman Britain.

Indeed if landowners could call on unfree tenants and had a core of trained estate guards, then we're looking at a very different military picture from a traditional 'tribal' force
Which is fascinating in itself