History of the Isle of Wight inhabitants of southern Britain at this time may indeed have been Germanic, rather than Celtic, which could re-open the possibility of the island's name having Germanic roots. The Romans occupied southern Britain, including the Isle of Wight, for nearly four hundred years. The Romans built no towns on the island, but it became an agricultural centre, and at least seven Roman villas are known. The Roman villas at Newport and Brading have been excavated and are open to the public. When fully developed around 300 AD, Brading was probably the largest on the Island, being a courtyard villa with impressive
Christianity in Roman Britain interest in Romano-British Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, where it occurred against a backdrop of the arguments between adherents of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. An Italian writer, Polydore Vergil, came to England in 1501 and befriended King Henry VIII; he wrote the "Historiae Anglicae", which dealt with the arrival of Christianity. Following the English Reformation, in which the Church of England switched its allegiance from Roman Catholicism to the Protestant-influenced Anglicanism, there were a growing number of English theologians who turned to the first arrival of Christianity in Britain to argue that the island had preserved an older,