]

Of the rest, some part may have been included in the Imperial Domains,
which covered wide tracts in every province and were administered for
local purposes by special procurators of the Emperor. The lead-mining
districts--Mendip in Somerset, the neighbourhood of Matlock in
Derbyshire, the Shelve Hills west of Wroxeter, the Halkyn region in
Flintshire, the moors of south-west Yorkshire--must have belonged to
these Domains, and for the most part are actually attested by
inscriptions on lead-pigs as Imperial property. Of other domain lands we
meet one early instance at Silchester in the reign of Nero[1]--perhaps
the confiscated estates of some British prince or noble--and though we
have no further direct evidence, the analogy of other provinces suggests
that the area increased as the years went by. Yet it is likely that in
Britain, as indeed in Gaul,[2] the domain lands were comparatively small
in amount. Like the municipalities, they account only for a part of the
province.

[Footnote 1: Tile inscribed NERCLCAEAVGGER, _Nero Claudius Caesar
Augustus Germanicus_ (_Eph._ ix. 1267). It differs markedly from the
ordinary tiles found at Silchester, and plainly belongs to a different
period in the history of the site. Possibly the estate, or whatever it
was, did not remain Imperial after Nero's downfall; compare Plutarch,
_Galba_, 5. The Combe Down _Principia_ (C. vii. 62), which are certainly
not military, may supply another example, of about A.D. 210 (_Vict.
Hist. Somerset_, i. 311; _Eph._ ix. p. 516).]

[Footnote 2: Hirschfeld in Lehmann's _Beitraege zur alten Geschichte_,
ii. 307, 308. Much of the Gaulish domain land appears to date from
confiscations in A.D. 197.]

Throughout all the rest of the British province, or at least of its
civilized area, the local government was probably organized on the same
cantonal system as obtained in northern Gaul. According to this system
the local unit was the former territory of the tribe or canton, and the
local magistrates were the chiefs or nobles of the tribe. That may
appear at first sight to be a native system, wholly out of harmony with
the Roman method of government by municipalities. Yet such was not its
actual effect. The cantonal or tribal magistrates were classified and
arranged just like the magistrates of a municipality. They even used the
same titles. The cantonal _civitas_ had its _duoviri_ and quaestors and
so forth, and its _ordo_ or senate, precisely like any mun