At length a time came when the Romans could no longer defend their own
native country against the nations in the north of Europe. The
soldiers were then withdrawn from Britain (about the year 440), and
the people left to govern themselves. The Caledonians, who did not
like to be so much straitened in the north, took advantage of the
unprotected state of the Britons to pour in upon them from the other
side of the wall, and despoil them of their lives and goods. The
British had no resource but to call in another set of protectors, the
Saxons, a warlike people who lived in the north of Germany, and the
Jutes and Angles, who inhabited Denmark. The remedy was found hardly
any better than the disease. Having once acquired a footing in the
island, these hardy strangers proceeded to make it a subject of
conquest, as the Romans had done before, with this material
difference, that they drove the British to the western parts of the
island, particularly into Wales, and settled, with new hordes of their
countrymen, over the better part of the land. So completely was the
population changed, that, excepting in the names of some of the hills
and rivers, the British language was extinguished, and even the name
of the country itself was changed, from what it originally was to
Angle-land or England, a term taken from the Angles. The conquest
required about two hundred and fifty years to be effected, and, like
that of the Romans, it extended no farther north than the Firths of
Forth and Clyde. Before the Britons were finally cooped up in Wales,
many battles were fought; but few of these are accurately recorded.
The most distinguished of the British generals were the Princes
Vortimer and Aurelius Ambrosius. It is probably on the achievements of
the latter that the well-known fables of King Arthur and his knights
are founded.
England, exclusive of the western regions, was now divided into seven
kingdoms, called Kent, Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex,
Sussex, and Wessex, each of which was governed by a race descended
from the leader who had first subdued it; and the whole have since
been called by historians the _Saxon Heptarchy_, the latter word being
composed of two Greek words, signifying _seven kingdoms_. To the north
of the Forth dwelt a nation called the Picts, who also had a king, and
were in all probability the people with whom Agricola had fought under
the name of Caledonians. In the Western Highlands there was another
nation, known by the name of the Scots, or Dalriads, who had gradually
migrated thither from Ireland, between the middle of the third century
and the year 503, when they established, under a chief named Fergus, a
monarchy destined in time to absorb all the rest. About the year 700
there were no fewer than fifteen kings, or chiefs, within the island,
while Ireland was nearly in the same situation. In Britain, at the
same time, five languages were in use, the Latin, Saxon, Welsh, the
Pictish, and the Irish. The general power of the country has been
found to increase as these nations and principalities were gradually
amassed together.
Although three of the Saxon kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and
Northumberland, became predominant, the Heptarchy prevailed from about
the year 585 to 800, when Egbert, king of Wessex, acquired a paramount
influence over all the other states, though their kings still
continued to reign. Alfred, so celebrated for his virtues, was the
grandson of Egbert, and began to reign in the year 871. At this time
the Danes, who are now a quiet, inoffensive people, were a nation of
pirates, and at the same time heathens. They used to come in large
fleets, and commit dreadful ravages on the shores of Britain. For some
time they completely overturned the sovereignty of Alfred, and
compelled him to live in obscurity in the centre of a marsh. But he at
length fell upon them when they thought themselves in no danger, and
regained the greater part of his kingdom. Alfred spent the rest of his
life in literary study, of which he was very fond, and in forming laws
and regulations for the good of his people. He was perhaps the most
able, most virtuous, and most popular prince that ever reigned in
Britain; and all this is the more surprising, when we find that his
predecessors and successors, for many ages, were extremely cruel and
ignorant. He died in the year 901, in the fifty-third year of his age.