A.D. 409.

CLOSE OF THE ROMAN POWER.

13

He was ultimately defeated and put to death in 388. During his five years of struggling power, large numbers of the British had followed his fortunes in Gaul; and, after his fall, they refused to return to their native country. The old chroniclers, Gildas, Bede, Nennius, and Henry of Huntingdon, distinctly connect the settlement of a Roman-British colony in Gaul with the period of the usurpation of Maximus. The story of Conan, the British chief, who led his followers to the walls of Paris, and there fought with Maximus against Gratian, is circumstantially told in the histories of Brittany by D'Argentré and Daru. Maximus and Conan separated. The British chief carried his legions to Armorica, where he founded that colony which for so many centuries had an intimate connection with Cornwall and Wales; and where the same language as that of its Britannic founders was long spoken. The emigration to the western shores of Gaul may not have been so numerous as some believe, who put the number of armed warriors at a hundred thousand; but that there was a decided weakening of the military strength of the country, towards the end of the fourth century, is very manifest. The hordes of Alaric were overrunning Italy. When the remote British province was harassed by its fierce enemies from the Grampian mountains, and from the more dangerous neighbourhood of Galloway and Dumfries-shire, sometimes the Roman soldiers could be spared for their succour, and the invaders were driven back. When the Roman legions were recalled, the untiring enemies again came. The island was harassed within as well as from without. Pretenders to a sovereign power in the Roman province were set up, and as quickly deposed. Marcus and Gratian were rulers for a few months. Constantine, a soldier raised from the ranks, had a somewhat longer tenure of power; but leaving Britain, to carry on a more extended resistance to the Emperor Honorius, the Britons threw off their allegiance to the Roman authority, and by one vigorous effort repelled their fierce assailants by their own strength. Zosimus, the historian, records those events, as well as the concurrent establishment of an independent government by the Armoricans. "The neglect of Constantine," he says, "compelled both the inhabitants of the Britannic island, as well as some of the Celtic nations, to revolt from the empire of the Romans, and to live independent of them, no longer obeying their laws. people, therefore, of Britain, taking up arms and defying every danger, freed their cities from the invading barbarians. And the whole Armoric and other provinces of Gaul, imitating the Britons, liberated themselves in like manner, expelling the Roman prefects, and setting up a civil policy according to their own inclination."

The

Here, then, in the year 409, was our England an independent state. In the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "-the curious but meagre record of early events, which is supposed to have existed in the time of Alfred, and even to have been partly compiled by that great king,-there is the following entry, which singularly agrees with the chronology of Greek and Latin historians "A. 409. This year the Goths took the city of Rome by storm, and after this the Romans never ruled in Britain, and this was about eleven hundred and ten years after it was built. Altogether they ruled in Britain four hundred and seventy years since Caius Julius first

sought the land." Bede has the same account of the duration of the Roman rule. Procopius, who flourished in the sixth century, relating the defeat of Constantine and his son by Honorius, says, "The Romans no longer had it in their power to recover Britain; so that from this time it remained subject to usurpers."

CHAPTER I..

WHEN the Roman power was withdrawn, the municipal institutions which the imperial rule had established resolved themselves into separate governments without any principle of cohesion. Nor was the power of the Christian Church in Britain of a more united character than that of the civil rulers. At this time arose the Pelagian heresy, and was adopted, according to Bede, by those "conspicuous for riches." Pelagius was a Briton, whose plain unlatinised name was Morgan. The people were the judges of this great controversy; and gave their voices for the orthodox belief.

Macaulay says of this period, "an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth." This accomplished historian questions the very existence of Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred. We derive Hengist and Horsa from old Anglo-Saxon authorities; and modern history generally adopts them. Arthur and Mordred have a Celtic origin, and they are as generally rejected as "mythical persons." It appears to us that it is as precipitate wholly to renounce the one as the other, because they are both surrounded with an atmosphere of the fabulous. According to Anglo-Saxon historians, Hengist and Horsa landed in the year 449, on the shore which is called Ypwinesfleet. "They were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils son of Witta, Witta son of Wecta, Wecta of Woden. From this Woden sprung all our royal families." These descendants, in the third generation, from the great Saxon divinity, came over in three boats. They came by invitation of Wyrtgeone-Vortigern-king of the Britons. The king gave them land in the south-east of the country, on condition that they should fight against the Picts; and they did fight, and had the victory wheresoever they came. They sent for the Angles, and told them of the worthlessness of the people and the excellences of the land. Then came the great battles for possession of the country. At Aylesford and Crayford the Kentish Britons were overthrown. Before the Angles, the Welsh fled like fire. Hengist and Esc slew four troops of Britons with the edge of the sword. Hengist then vanishes, and Ella comes with his three sons. In 491 they besieged Andres-cester, "and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was there left." Then come Cerdic and Cynric his son; then Port and his two sons, and land at Portsmouth; and so we reach the sixth century. Cerdic and Cynric now stand foremost amongst the slaughterers and they establish the kingdom of the West Saxons, and conquer the Isle of Wight. In the middle of the century, Ida begins to

A.D. 580.

LANDING OF THE SAXONS AND ANGLES.

15

reign, from whom arose the royal race of North-humbria. In 565, Ethelbert succeeded to the kingdom of the Kentish-men, and held it fiftythree years. The war goes on in the south-midland counties, where Cuthwulf is fighting; and it reaches the districts of the Severn, where Cuthwine and Ceawlin slay great kings, and take Gloucester, and Cirencester, and Bath. One of these fierce brethren is killed at last, and Ceawlin, "having taken many spoils and towns innumerable, wrathful returned to his own." These details we gather from the Anglo-Saxon records. In the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth we have Rowena with her golden wine-cup; the two dragons who hindered the foundation of Vorti. gern's tower; Usher Pendragon bringing over "The Giant's Dance" from Ireland, and setting it up in Salisbury Plain; his son Arthur, with his magician Merlin, and his Knights of the Round Table; the traitor Mordred, and many other mythical personages and events.

Amidst the bewildering mass of the obscure and the fabulous which our history presents of the first century and a half of the Saxon colonisation, there are some well-established facts which are borne out by subsequent investigations. Such is Bede's account of the country of the invaders, and the parts in which they settled. This account, compared with other authorities, gives us the following results :-They consisted of "the three most powerful nations of Germany,-Saxons, Angles, and Jutes." The Saxons came from the parts which, in Bede's time, were called the country of the Old Saxons. That country is now known as the Duchy of Holstein. These, under Ella, founded the kingdom of the South Saxons, our present Sussex. Later in the fifth century, the same people, under Cerdic, established themselves in the district extending from Sussex to Devonshire and Cornwall, which was the kingdom of the West Saxons. Other Saxons settled in Essex and Middlesex. The Angles, says Bede, came from "the country called Angelland, and it is said from that time to remain desert to this day." There is part of the Duchy of Sleswig, to the north of Holstein, which still bears the name of Angel or Angeln. These people gave their name to the whole country, Engla-land, or Angla-land, from the greater extent of territory which they permanently occupied. As the Saxons possessed themselves of the southern coasts, the Angles established themselves on the north-eastern. Their kingdom of East Anglia comprised Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as part of Cambridgeshire; and they extended them. selves to the north of the Humber, forming the powerful state of Northumbria, and carrying their dominion even to the Forth and the Clyde. The Jutes came from the country north of the Angles, which is in the upper part of the present Sleswig; and they occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, with that part of Hampshire which is opposite the island. Sir Francis Palgrave is of opinion that "the tribes by whom Britain was invaded appear principally to have proceeded from the country now called Friesland; for, of all the continental dialects, the ancient Frisick is the one which approaches most nearly to the Anglo-Saxon of our ancestors."

Connected with the early name of the country is the well-known story of Gregory the Great. In the market-place of Rome were exposed to sale same youthful slaves-fair-skinned and comely, with the long hair which was regarded as a mark of good descent. They are Angles- Angli,- said

the dealers in slaves. "They have an angelic mien," said the monk Gregory, "and it becomes such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven." They come from the province of Deira, said the merchants (Northumbria was divided into Deira and Bernicia). "It is well," said the priest; "de ira eruti, snatched from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ." Lastly, he was told that the king of the province was Ella. "Alleluiah," said the good father; "the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts." From that time Gregory devoted himself to the conversion of that Britain which had relapsed into heathendom.

"This year" (A.D. 597), says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "Augustin and his companions came to the land of the Angles." The earnest wish of Gregory had at length been carried out. At the first command of his spiritual superior, Augustin and his companions set forward. They landed in the Isle of Thanet, in number about forty. "At that time," says Bede, "Ethelbert was the powerful king of Kent, who had extended his dominions as far as the great river Humber, by which the Southern Saxons are divided from the Northern." In the Kentish kingdom were now included those of Essex and Sussex, as a confederation acknowledging the supremacy of Ethelbert. The kingdom of the West Saxons was another powerful confederation, which ultimately became the acknowledged seat of the sovereignty of England. East Anglia had its defined boundaries in the extreme east of the island. Mercia claimed much of the remainder of England east of the Severn and south of the Humber; but at the time of Ethelbert, successful policy and warfare had subjected its petty sovereigns to the authority of the Kentish king. Northumbria, uniting the two kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia, extended beyond the Humber to the Border-land. There, in the north, were the Picts and Scots. In the farther west of England, and throughout Wales, were large portions of the unsubdued British race.

To Ethelbert, then, the king of one of the most fertile portions of England, came the missionaries of Pope Gregory. They had taken with them "interpreters of the nation of the Franks." The king had married Berhta, the daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, who, by the terms of her marriage contract, enjoyed the exercise of Christian worship in the church of Saint Martin at Canterbury, which had subsisted from the Roman times of Christianity in Britain. There was, no doubt, commercial intercourse between France and England about that period; for the Anglo-Saxons who traded to Rouen are recognised as frequenting the great fair of St. Denis. With these interpreters, then, Augustin had an interview with the Kentish king. He received the missionaries in the open air; "for he had taken precaution that they should not come to him in any house, according to the ancient superstition, lest, if they had any magical arts, they might at their coming impose upon him, and get the better of him. They came, bearing a silver cross and a painted image, singing the Litany and offering up prayers. The king was not enthusiastic, but he was tolerant. He declined to forsake what he had so long followed with his people; but he allowed the missionaries publicly to teach their religion, and gave them a dwelling-place in his metropolis of Canterbury. In due time Ethelbert became himself a convert.

A.D. 600.

ETHELBERT'S CODE OF LAWS.

17

Augustin does not appear to have carried out the liberal and truly Christian views of his spiritual superior, Gregory. His want of humility so offended the ministers of the ancient British church, who had maintained the Christian doctrine amidst the changes and terrors of three centuries, that they refused to acknowledge him as their archbishop. There was no union between the Anglo-Saxon and the British church; and Augustin threatened that, if they would not accept peace with their brothers, they should have war with their enemies. The vengeance with which they were threatened finally came upon them in the massacre of Bangor. On that terrible day, when Ethelfrith, the Bernician, advanced against the Britons, the monks of Bangor, who had fled to the army headed by the chief of Powis, knelt upon the battle-field, and prayed for the safety of their countrymen. The Pagan Saxon ordered the unarmed band to be massacred; "for if they are crying to God for my enemies, then they fight against me, though without arms."

Before the death of Ethelbert, in 616, he promulgated a code of laws, according to the counsel of wise men. These laws were a collection of the ordinances in practical application amongst the Saxon people for the administration of justice; and they continued in force, with variation that very slightly affected their principle, for several centuries. They were the Common Law of the Germanic tribes, reduced in Ethelbert's kingdom to a statutory form, at the beginning of the seventh century. They were founded upon the principle of pecuniary compensation for every offence against person and property. The law of the state fixed a value upon every man's life, according to his degree; which price, in the event of his being slain, was to be paid to his relatives. In the same way it fixed a tariff upon the outrages upon a man's domestic honour, and upon all personal injuries that did not destroy life. The evil consequences of the infliction, and not the motive of the offender, regulated the amount of the amends. These "dooms," as they were called, applied only to freemen. The greater number of the community were unfree. There were poor freemen, no doubt, who held land upon the consideration of a labour rent, but the greater number of all labourers were serfs. The law gave compensation to the owner of a slave for his murder or mutilation by another, but the owner was himself privileged to murder or mutilate him without accountability to any earthly tribunal. Pecuniary compensation for any offence the serf might commit was out of the question. He had no property, and he paid by yielding his body to the lash.

Bede tells the story of the conversion of King Edwin by Paulinus with his usual charming simplicity. Edwin was king of Northumbria. His youth had been one of exile and suffering. He had regained his kingdom, and had married the Christian daughter of Ethelbert of Kent. Paulinus, an ordained bishop, had come with the young Princess Ethelburga to Edwin's country, and had sought in vain to convert the king. An assassin, seut by the king of the West Saxons, attempted the life of Edwin; but the king was saved by the fidelity of one of his nobles, who interposed his own body to avert the death-stroke from his lord. At the same hour Ethelburga bore a daughter. The young king vowed, that if he could obtain a victory over him who had sent the assassin, he would renounce his idols.

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