ABSTRACT
The resulting towns were the product of coincidence rather than of continuity. This seemed to be a reasonable opinion based on the assumption that in Britain the break with the Roman past had been complete. The difference in rural settlement patterns was largely explained by the assumption that the invaders possessed a different farming technology to their predecessors. The pattern may make more sense if we think of it in terms of English relationships with Roman urban life and then with Roman rural life. Large numbers of German troops must have been familiar with the functions and facilities of towns and cities. The possibility that English nobles took over the role of British landlords raises the question of whether entire estates passed into Germanic hands. The ‘fire and the sword’ images of the surviving literature might make us despair of finding any Celtic survival in English territory.
