Brigantes

The Brigantes were the largest people in Britain by territory, holding almost the whole of the north of England from coast to coast, and their collapse is a study in how Rome preferred to conquer. Initially they were not conquered at all: their queen Cartimandua ruled as a client of Rome from the invasion of 43 AD, keeping her territory as a buffer in exchange for loyalty, and in 51 AD she demonstrated the value of the arrangement by handing over Caratacus, the leader of British resistance, in chains when he sought refuge with her. Her position depended on Roman support and eventually required it. She divorced her husband Venutius and married his armour-bearer, Venutius raised the anti-Roman faction against her, and after two civil wars the Romans extracted Cartimandua in 69 AD - the year of four emperors, when they could spare nothing else - and left Venutius holding the kingdom. That ended the client arrangement. Petillius Cerialis and then Agricola conquered Brigantian territory outright in the 70s, and the great hillfort at Stanwick, probably Venutius's base, was abandoned. The territory afterwards carried the heaviest military occupation in Britain: the legionary fortress at York, the road network, and eventually Hadrian's Wall along its northern edge. Brigantian revolts are recorded into the second century. Their name, meaning something like the high or exalted ones, survives in no modern place-name of consequence, which is unusual for a people of that size. Cartimandua is one of only two British queens named in Roman sources and the other is Boudica, which is a small sample from which a great deal has been inferred. Stanwick encloses more than seven hundred acres, among the largest Iron Age earthworks in Europe. York remained the military capital of northern Britain for three centuries.

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