Julius Caesar briefly invaded Britain in 55 B.C., but was unable to establish a permanent presence there because of the need to return to Gaul to put down a massive uprising led by the Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix. The Romans finally returned for good under the emperor Claudius I. Due to fierce Druidic resistance and an uprising by Boudicca, the Queen of the Britons, it took more than twenty years to pacify the island. The Romans were never able to conquer Caledonia on the northern end of the island, and satisfied themselves with building a wall to defend against Pict raids on the Roman province of Britannia.
Despite a relatively long occupation, outside of a few towns and wealthy villas, Britannia was never truly Romanized. In the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., Britannia was increasingly harried by Saxon raids. In 410 A.D., the island was abandoned by the Emperor Honorius in order to focus on the defense of other parts of the empire. After the invasions of the Angles and the Saxons in the fifth and the sixth centuries, little remained from the Roman occupation except for the Roman roads and a handful of place names.