THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST.
With the departure of the Roman legions from Britain we enter upon a
period of even denser darkness than those which we have been lately
traversing, nor is the veil lifted till by the mission of St. Augustine
(596) our island is again brought into the family of the Christian
nations of Europe. The two centuries during which the voice of
authentic history is thus silent, from 407 to 596, were the period of
the fall of the Roman empire in the west and the establishment in its
stead of the great Teutonic kingdoms, Frankish, Burgundian, Visigothic,
from which the states of modern Europe are descended.
Owing to the extremely imperfect character of our information
concerning the Anglo-Saxon conquest, which was for us the chief
event of these two centuries, and the fact that scarcely any of it
is contemporary, some of it obviously legendary and fabulous, it is
impossible to speak with any confidence as to its details. Almost
every date may be challenged: “probably” or “to the best of our
knowledge” are qualifying clauses which should be prefixed to almost
every statement. It may be well, however, first to set forth in broad
outlines the main facts which are beyond the reach of controversy. No
one doubts that about the middle of the fifth century, if not before,
the Romano-Celtic inhabitants of Britain were invaded by Teutonic
tribes from the shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic. The tribes
chiefly concerned in the invasion were the Saxons and the Angles, but
the smaller nation of the Jutes are said to have been the first to
undertake a definite scheme of conquest, and it is asserted with much
positiveness that they came at first as auxiliaries to help the Britons
against the Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland, who were
ravaging the undefended land. To the Jutes is attributed the foundation
of the kingdom of Kent and a settlement in the Isle of Wight. The far
more numerous Saxons who followed them established the two kingdoms of
the South Saxons and East Saxons, which are represented by the modern
counties of Sussex and Essex; and after the lapse of two generations
the West Saxons, invading Hampshire, laid there the foundation of
the great kingdom of Wessex, which gradually included almost all the
country south of the Thames. Their kings eventually became lords of the
whole of Britain, and were ancestors through females of the sovereign
who now sits upon the throne. The Angles, who were apparently the
latest comers of all, founded the kingdoms of East Anglia (Norfolk
and Suffolk), Mercia (the midland counties), Deira (Yorkshire), and
Bernicia (Durham, Northumberland, and East Scotland as far as the Firth
of Forth).
A few words must be said as to the ethnological relations of these
three tribes. It is not disputed that they all belonged to the great
Low German family of nations, to which the Goths probably belonged and
from which the Dutch and most of the inhabitants of northern Germany
are descended. As to the little nation of the Jutes we require further
information. They were once said to be identical with the Goths,
and more recently they have been connected with the inhabitants of
Jutland. The first identification is certainly wrong, the second, for
philological reasons, is doubtful.[25] It seems that at present the
question must be left in suspense.[26]
The Saxons were placed by the geographer, Ptolemy (who wrote early in
the second century), in the country now known as Holstein, but in the
fourth century the name seems to have been applied to a much wider
range of people. The Saxons with whom Charlemagne waged his stubborn
wars at the close of the eighth century, inhabited the whole of
Westphalia, Hanover and Brunswick and other lands beside. From any part
of that country our Saxon ancestors may have come.
Of the Angles, who in the first century after Christ were living on the
right bank of the Elbe, near its mouth, Tacitus gives us an interesting
account. He tells us that they, together with the kindred tribes
between Elbe and Oder, worshipped the great goddess Nerthus, whose
image, ordinarily kept in the dark recesses of a sacred island, at
certain seasons paraded the lands of her votaries in a chariot drawn
by kine. Wherever the image of the goddess came, mirth reigned and war
ceased; but when her pilgrimage was ended, the image and the chariot,
returning to the dark island, were washed in a sacred lake, beneath
whose waters all the slaves who had taken part in the ceremony were at
once engulfed, in order to ensure their silence as to the mysteries
which they had beheld. A more interesting fact for us is the close
relation which, according to Tacitus, existed between the Angli and the
Longobardi, the tribe by whom, after long wanderings through central
Europe, the conquest of Italy was at last achieved in 568, possibly at
the very time when some of their old Anglian neighbours were beginning
to fit out their barks for the invasion of England. This ethnological
connexion is confirmed by the similarity of names to be found among
the two nations, a similarity which is but slightly veiled by the
changes which in the course of five centuries turned the Lombards from
a people speaking Low German to one with a High German language. Thus
the Adelperga of the Lombards corresponds to the Ethelberga of the
Anglo-Saxons; Sisibert to Sigeberht, Alipert to Alberht, Rotopert to
Rodberht, Adelbert to Ethelberht, and Audoin to Edwin. Moreover, the
great historian of the Lombards, Paulus Diaconus, who wrote towards
the end of the eighth century, tells us that their queen, Theodelinda,
adorned her palace at Pavia with pictures representing the Lombard
invaders of Italy in the very garb which they then wore, and which had
become antiquated in the two centuries that had elapsed before his own
time. “Their garments,” he says, “were loose and for the most part
made of linen, _such as the Anglo-Saxons are wont to wear_, adorned
with wide borders woven in various colours.” This is a valuable note
of costume, for its own sake, and a striking confirmation of the close
relationship once existing between the ancestors of two great nations
now joined in friendly alliance.
* * * * *
After this sketch of the antecedents of the three new actors on
the stage of British history, it remains for us to examine the
evidence--the slender evidence, as has been already said--as to their
proceedings during the conquest. It will be well to consider this
evidence under three heads:--
(1) The slight notices contained in the works of contemporary or nearly
contemporary Latin authors.
(2) The story of the conquest as given to us by the descendants of
the invaders, that is, especially by Bede and the authors of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
(3) The same story as told by the descendants of the conquered, that
is, especially by Gildas and Nennius.
1. In the fifth century the writing of history in the Roman empire
had practically dwindled down to the composition of short books of
chronicles, generally by ecclesiastics. As literary compositions they
have no merit: they are generally very short, giving only three or
four lines to each year, and they have no sense of the proportionate
importance of the events which they record. But they give us for
the most part absolutely contemporary evidence, and the historian,
therefore, accepts them gratefully, with all their defects. One such
chronicle, by no means the best of its kind, is generally known by the
name of Prosper Tiro (a friend and correspondent of St. Augustine),
though it is certain that it was not written by him but by some
ecclesiastic of the period, with semi-Pelagian views. This dull and
second-rate writer gives us the two following precious entries, the
only contemporary evidence that we possess as to the Saxon invasions:
“The fifteenth year of Arcadius and Honorius [A.D. 409]: at this time
the strength of the Romans was utterly wasted by sickness; and the
provinces of Britain were laid waste by the incursion of the Saxons”.
“The eighteenth year of Theodosius II. [A.D. 441]: the provinces of
Britain which up to this time had been torn by various slaughters and
disasters, are brought under the dominion of the Saxons.”
There are two points in these entries to which the reader’s attention
should be particularly directed: the first, that the Saxon invasions
are represented as beginning in 409, almost immediately after the
departure of the usurper Constantine with the legions; the second, that
the subjugation of Britain by the Saxons is assigned by the chronicler
to 441, not 449, the date usually current on the authority of Bede. It
should be remarked, in passing, that if the chronicler supposed that
the whole of Roman Britain (which he calls Britanniæ, in the plural)
came under the dominion of the Saxons (or Saxons, Angles, and Jutes)
in that year, he was certainly mistaken. But some important stage in
the conquest, if we may trust this, our only contemporary authority,
was evidently reached in the year 441, and it was the climax of a
series of aggressions which had apparently been going on for thirty-two
years.
It should be mentioned that one other nearly contemporary authority,
the Greek historian Zosimus, alludes to the collapse of Roman rule in
Britain, which he attributes to a revolt of the natives, following
on the departure of the usurper Constantine with the legions. His
language, however, is obscure and even self-contradictory, and he
throws little light on the situation.
The authority which we have next to consider is the _Life of St.
Germanus_, written by the presbyter Constantius about the year 480.
It will be seen that this document is not strictly contemporary, the
writer being separated by an interval of about half a century from the
chief events recorded by him: and, moreover, there is throughout the
Life a tendency to glorify the saint by attributing to him various
manifestations of a miraculous or semi-miraculous kind, which does not
increase our confidence in his trustworthiness as a historian. But
all students of early medieval history are accustomed to this kind of
document, in which every remarkable event in the life of the subject
of the biography is invested with a halo of thaumaturgic sanctity, and
though they are not the sort of historic materials which we prefer,
we must accept them (while making our own private reservations as to
the amount of faith which we repose in all their details) or give up
writing the story of the Middle Ages altogether.
In the case before us, the missionary Germanus, whose adventures in
Britain are related by the biographer, was a great and well-known
historical personage. He had held, under the empire, the high military
dignity of duke of the Armorican shore (Normandy and Brittany), had
been consecrated Bishop of Auxerre against his will, had thereupon said
farewell to the delights of sportsmanship, and entered earnestly on
the duties of his new calling. He had as a fellow-missionary, Lupus,
who many years after, as Bishop of Troyes, earned great renown by
dissuading the savage warrior, Attila, from an attack on his cathedral
city. It is a striking testimony to the character of both men that
their contemporary, Apollinaris Sidonius, when he wishes to celebrate
the virtues of another eminent prelate, Anianus, Bishop of Orleans,
can find no higher term of praise than this: “He was equal to Lupus
and not unequal to Germanus”. Such were the two men who in the year
429 were sent at the bidding of Pope Celestine, and in conformity with
the resolutions of a synod of Gaulish bishops, “to purge the minds of
the people of Britain from the Pelagian heresy and bring them back to
the Catholic faith,” that is, to the Augustinian teaching on free-will
and the Divine grace. Their zealous preaching won over the multitude
to their side, but the Pelagians, who seem to have been found chiefly
among the wealthier Britons, challenged them to a public discussion, in
which their simple earnestness prevailed over the elaborate rhetoric of
the gaily clothed orators on the other side. A miracle followed: the
restoration of sight to a little girl of ten years old, the daughter
of “a certain man of tribunician rank”. After visiting the tomb of the
martyred Saint Alban and exchanging relics with the keepers of the
shrine, they resumed their journey, but, unfortunately, Germanus was
for several days confined by a sprained ankle to a humble cottage in
the country. The cottage itself and all the little hovels round it were
thatched with reeds from the marsh, and fire having broken out in the
little settlement, the saint’s life seemed to be in jeopardy, but he
refused to stir, and his cottage alone remained unconsumed.
Then followed the celebrated incident of the Hallelujah battle which
is the chief reason for referring to the mission. The scene of the
encounter is not made known to us, but it evidently took place in a
mountainous country, possibly in Wales.[27] The first sentence of
the biographer, describing the campaign, is so important that it
must be translated literally: “In the meanwhile the Saxons and the
Picts, driven into one camp by the same necessity, with conjoined
force undertook war against the Britons, and, when the latter deemed
their strength unequal to the contest, they sought the aid of the
holy bishops, who, hastening their arrival, brought with them such
an accession of confidence as was equivalent to a mighty host”. The
biographer then describes the baptism of the larger part of the
army on Easter day; their eagerness for battle while they were still
moist with the baptismal water; the choice of the battle-field by the
veteran officer Germanus; that battle-field a valley surrounded by
mountains; the placing of an ambuscade whose duty it was to signal to
him the approach of the foe. At the signal given the bishops gave the
word “Hallelujah,” which was repeated in a tremendous shout by the
multitudes carefully posted out of sight, and was repeated from peak
to peak of the surrounding mountains. Hereat the terror-stricken foes
imagined not only rocks hurled down upon them, but the very artillery
of heaven let loose for their destruction. Casting away their arms they
fled in all directions, and the larger number of them were swallowed up
in the river which they had just crossed; the Hallelujah victory was
complete, a victory like that of Gideon over the Midianites, won by
moral means alone.
This narrative when we remember its nearly contemporary character has
an important bearing on the history of Britain in the fifth century. It
seems to show that, twenty years after the withdrawal of the legions,
the condition of the Britons was not absolutely desperate. There were
still among them wealthy men and eloquent ecclesiastics dressed in
costly garments, and the people were not too much engrossed by the
mere struggle for existence to have leisure to listen to the elaborate
arguments about original sin, free will and assisting grace which
formed the staple of the Pelagian controversy. Moreover the union of
the Saxons with the Picts in the hostile army is surely a point of no
small importance. If we connect it with the previously quoted entry
of Tiro, assigning to the year 409 the beginning of a series of Saxon
devastations, we may suspect that the commonly received story which
attributes the Teutonic invasions entirely to the folly of the Britons
who called in the Saxons to help them against the Picts, is, if not
altogether false, at any rate an exaggeration of one not very important
incident in the contest.
* * * * *
2. For the story told by the invaders, our chief authorities are Bede
and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. (_a_) It must be confessed that for
this part of the history we do not get much assistance from the monk
of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede. He was probably the most learned man
of his time in Europe; his conception of the duty of a historian
is a high and noble one, and when we reach the seventh century, the
golden age of Northumbrian Christianity, we shall find his assistance
invaluable; but, writing as he did in 731, he was separated by nearly
three centuries from the great Saxon invasions, and it seems clear
that he had little or nothing derived from the genuine traditions of
his race to say concerning them. The first book of his _Ecclesiastical
History_ is therefore little more than a mosaic of passages from
Orosius, Eutropius, and, pre-eminently, the Briton Gildas (hereafter
to be described), from whom he derives almost the whole history of the
Caledonian invasion, and of the calling in of the Saxons as defenders
against the attacks of the Picts. It is, however, to Bede that we owe
the first mention of the British king Vortigern as well as of the names
of Hengest and Horsa. It must remain an unsolved question from what
source Bede derived the name of Vortigern, the inviter of the Saxons
into Britain. Gildas, who is his main authority for this part of the
story, while hinting at the personality of Vortigern, hides his name.
After describing the three invading nations, the Jutes, the Saxons
and the Angles, Bede continues: “Their generals” (according to strict
grammatical construction this should refer not to the Jutes but to
the Angles) “are said to have been two brothers, Hengest and Horsa,
of whom Horsa was afterwards slain in war by the Britons. To this day
a monument inscribed by his name exists in the eastern parts of Kent.
These two were sons of Wictgils, the son of Witta, the son of Wecta,
the son of Woden, from whose stock the royal families of many provinces
derived their origin.” Bede then goes on to describe how the bands of
the three nations already named began to pour into the island, how
they made a treaty with the Picts whom they had previously conquered
and driven far away, and how they then turned their arms against their
British allies. From this point he merely copies Gildas, describing in
lamentable tones the ravage wrought by his countrymen. It is pointed
out by Bede’s latest editor, Plummer, that such information as the
Northumbrian monk possessed concerning Kent would be naturally derived
by him from his Kentish friends, Albinus, abbot of Canterbury, and
Nothelm, priest of the church of London, to both of whom he expressly
refers in his preface. But apparently even their traditions could not
carry him very far. Save for such information as the conquered race
could supply, Bede’s mind was little more than a blank as to events in
England between the ages of Honorius and Gregory the Great.
The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ is the great historical monument of our
race in its youthful days, and probably owes its original inception to
the wise encouragement of Alfred. As that great prince ruled in the
later years of the ninth century it is plain that the interval between
the historian and the events recorded is even greater in the case of
the Chronicle than in that of Bede. To a considerable extent the early
annals in the Chronicle are founded upon Bede’s history, and so far we
may safely neglect them since they add nothing to the evidence already
before the court; but there is also a certain amount of information,
especially relating to the kingdom of Wessex, to which we find nothing
that corresponds in Bede; and this part of the Chronicle--whatever
it may be worth--must of course be treated as a primary authority.
What is the real historical value of the statements which we find in
it concerning yet heathen England? There is evidently in them some
admixture of the fabulous. When we find, as we shall do, a Saxon
chieftain, Port, described as the founder of Portsmouth, the _Portus
Magnus_ of the Romans, and Wihtgar made the name-giver to the Isle
of Wight, which had been known as Vectis for centuries before he was
born, we feel that we are in the presence of traditions, not genuine
but manufactured out of etymology. Moreover the dates so elaborately
given by the Chronicle seem to have been arranged (as was pointed
out by Lappenberg) on an artificial system with recurring periods of
eight and four years; which looks like the work of men with slender
materials trying to make the bricks of history without the straw of
genuine chronology. There is a good deal of distrust of the earlier
portions of the Chronicle in the minds of historical students, side by
side with a high appreciation of its general fairness, and gratitude
to the scribes who have preserved for us so much of the records of
the past, even though their narrative is often somewhat arid. On the
whole it seems the wisest, in fact the only possible course, to take
thankfully the information which the Chronicle gives us as to these
two mist-enshrouded centuries, not absolutely maintaining its accuracy
in every particular, but yielding to it a provisional assent, until
either by internal or external evidence it shall be proved to be
legendary or impossible.
It may be as well to state here that there are various manuscripts
of the Chronicle hailing from different ecclesiastical centres, the
divergences of which in the later centuries of Anglo-Saxon history
are sometimes of great importance. For the present, however, this
question does not arise. Save for a few not very important Northumbrian
interpolations, the manuscripts of the Chronicle may be considered
as one, and their source of origin may be considered to have been
Winchester, the focus of all West Saxon government and culture.
The allusions made in the Chronicle to the departure of the Romans
from Britain are naturally very scanty: “In 409 the Goths broke up the
city of Rome, and never after that did the Romans rule in Britain”.
“In 418 the Romans gathered together all the gold-hoards that were in
Britain and hid some in the earth, so that no man thenceforth should
ever find them, and some they took with them into Gaul.” Let us proceed
therefore to examine the evidence furnished from this source as to the
foundation of the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, and Northumbria. As
to the early history of East Anglia, Essex and Mercia the Chronicle is
altogether silent.
_Kent._--A.D. 449.[28] Wyrtgeorn [Vortigern] invites the Angles to
Britain. They come over in three “keels” and land at Heopwines-fleet
[Ebbs-fleet in the Isle of Thanet], and he gives them lands in the
south-east of the country on condition of their fighting the Picts.
This they do successfully, but they send home for more of their
countrymen, telling them of the worthlessness of the Britons and the
goodness of the land. Their generals were two brothers, Hengest and
Horsa, sons of Wictgils with the pedigree as given by Bede.
A.D. 455. Hengest and Horsa fight with Vortigern at Aegeles-threp
[Aylesford on the Medway]. Horsa is slain. Hengest assumes the title of
king, and associates with himself his son Aesc.
A.D. 456. Hengest and Aesc fight with the Britons at Crecgan-ford
[Crayford, about six miles south-east of Woolwich], and slay 4,000
of them. The Britons evacuate Kent and with much fear flee to
London-borough.
A.D. 465. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen” [Britons] near
Wippedes-fleote, and there slay twelve Welsh nobles, themselves losing
one thane, whose name was Wipped.
A.D. 473. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen,” and take booty
past counting. The Welsh flee “as a man fleeth fire”.
That is all the information vouchsafed us as to the conquest of Kent,
which was evidently not an easy matter, taking as it did nearly thirty
years to finish. Possibly ere the strife was ended the invaders
somewhat modified their views as to the military worthlessness of the
Britons. London, which is transiently mentioned here in the annal for
456 is not mentioned again in the Chronicle till 851. We hear of it,
however, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in 604. The history of Kent
is a blank from the year 473 till 565 when Ethelbert, who afterwards
embraced Christianity, began his long reign of fifty-three years.
_Sussex._--We know from other sources that, far on into the Middle
Ages, Sussex was divided from Kent by the dense forest of the
Andredesweald or Andredesleag, and accordingly the conquest of one
country by no means necessitated the conquest of the other, which is
assigned to a considerably later date than that given for the landing
of Hengest and Horsa.
A.D. 477. Aelle with three sons and three keels come to the place
called Cymenes ora. He slays many “Welshmen,” and drives others to take
refuge in the wood that is called Andredesleag.
A.D. 485. He fights with “Welshmen” near Mearcredesburn.
A.D. 491. “Aelle and Cissa begirt Andredesceaster and slay all who
dwell therein, nor was there for that reason one Briton left alive.”
This wholesale butchery of the British defenders of the Roman fortress
of Anderida, overlooking Pevensey Bay, has naturally attracted much
attention, and is constantly appealed to by those who maintain that
the earlier stages of the Saxon conquest were an absolute war of
extermination. It is to be observed that Aelle, who founded an
exceptionally short-lived dynasty, is not credited with any long line
of ancestors reaching back to the mythic Woden. Chichester, capital of
the South Saxon kingdom, founded probably on the site of the Roman city
of Regnum, is said to have derived its name from Cissa, son of Aelle.
_Wessex._--As might naturally be expected in a chronicle having its
birth-place in Winchester, the historical details as to Wessex are much
fuller than for the other kingdoms; so full that it is possible to
relinquish the mere annalistic form and to weave them into a continuous
narrative. In 495 (more than half a century after Tiro’s date of the
Saxon conquest) two chieftains, Cerdic and Cynric his son, came with
five ships to a place called Cerdices ora, and on the very day of their
landing fought a battle with the “Welshmen”. The scene of the landing
was probably somewhere in the noble harbour of Southampton Water. The
two chieftains were not as yet spoken of as kings, but bore the lower
title of _ealdormen_. Of Cerdic, however, the Chronicle recites the
usual half-legendary pedigree, reaching back through eight intervening
links to Woden, from whom (of course under later Christian influences)
the line is traced back to Noah and Adam. These pedigrees, or at least
the genuine Teutonic portion of them, may very probably have been
preserved in the songs of minstrels, and obviously belong to that
element of the Chronicle which is independent of Bede. We may look
upon the divine ancestor Woden as marking the limit of the minstrel’s
memory or knowledge, and we shall therefore probably be justified in
concluding that the West Saxon tribe possessed some sort of continuous
historical tradition reaching back for eight generations behind Cerdic
(himself a middle-aged man in 495), or about to the beginning of the
third century. No wonder that kings whose very flatterers could not
trace back their lineage to an earlier date than that of the Emperor
Severus, felt their dynasties new and short-lived in presence of the
immemorial antiquity of Rome.
In 508, the two chiefs slew a British king named Natanleod and 5,000
men with him. Evidently by this time they must have been at the head of
a large number of followers. We are told that “the land”--apparently
the scene of the battle--was named after the slain king; and it is
generally supposed that this gives us the origin of the name Netley,
well known for its ruined abbey and its military hospital. Eleven
years later (in 519) they assumed the title of kings, being no longer
contented with the humbler designation of ealdormen, and fought the
Britons at Cerdicesford, a place identified with Charford on the Avon,
about six miles south of Salisbury. Meanwhile, however, there had been
other Saxon invasions of the same region. In 501 is placed the visit
of the legendary Port with his two sons to Portsmouth, and the death
of a young Briton of very high birth who vainly tried to defend his
land from their invasion. In 514 certain West Saxon reinforcements
are represented as arriving (perhaps in the Isle of Wight) under the
leadership of another eponymous hero, Wihtgar, and his brother Stuf,
nephews of Cerdic; and, probably with their help, in 530 Cerdic and
Cynric took possession of the Isle of Wight, after slaying many Britons
at Wihtgaræsbyrg or Carisbrooke. The statements in the Chronicle about
the conquest of the Isle of Wight, obscure and confused in themselves,
become yet more so when we compare them with an earlier passage
interpolated from Bede, in which the Jutes, not the West Saxons, are
represented as the conquerors of the Isle of Wight. Of course two
tides of Teutonic conquest may have passed over the island, but it
is difficult to bring the two lines of tradition into their proper
relation to one another.
In 534, Cerdic, who must now have been an old man, ended his life and
his near forty years of British warfare, and Cynric his son reigned
alone. We may sum up the total of Cerdic’s achievements by saying
that he seems to have completed the conquest of Hampshire and the
Isle of Wight, and that he probably fixed his royal residence at the
Romano-British city of Venta Belgarum, thereafter to be known as
Winchester. The fact that it required the labour of a lifetime to
achieve the conquest of a moderate-sized English county, sufficiently
shows that the Britons were not the mere Nithings (men of naught) whom
Hengest and some of Hengest’s Teutonic countrymen have represented them
to have been.
Of the reign of Cynric, which, according to the Chronicle, lasted
from 534 to 560, we have but little told us in that work. We hear
of a battle at Old Sarum in 552 and of another four years later at
Beranbyrig which is identified with Barbury in the north of Wiltshire.
Apparently the achievement of his reign was the addition of the greater
part of Wiltshire to the West Saxon kingdom. We may so far anticipate
the evidence of the British writers as to say that the twenty-six
years of Cynric probably coincide with part of the forty-four years of
comparative peace which they describe as following the British victory
of Mount Badon.
Far fuller of decisive events was the memorable reign of Ceawlin,
son of Cynric, which is assigned to the years between 560 and 592.
He was the eldest of a gallant band of brothers whose mutually
resembling names, Cutha and Cuthwine and Ceol and Ceolric, have given
no small trouble to the genealogists. The eighth year of his reign was
signalised by an event, unprecedented as far as we know in the history
of Anglo-Saxon England, namely, war between the invaders themselves.
The object of the West Saxon attack in 568 was Kent, whose young king
Ethelbert, after but three years of kingship, saw his land invaded
by Ceawlin and his brother Cutha. The battle-place was Wibbandune,
possibly Wimbledon in Surrey, and there two of Ethelbert’s ealdormen
were slain and himself put to flight. What terms he may have made with
the victors we know not, but he was not permanently dethroned, since
twenty-eight years afterwards we find him welcoming to his palace in
Canterbury the missionaries from Rome.
Three years later (571) a vigorous attack was made by Cutha on the
Britons, north of the Thames. A battle was fought at Bedford in which
Cutha himself was slain, but victory crowned the Saxon arms in the
general campaign, and four towns in Oxfordshire and Bucks (of which
Aylesbury alone has retained its importance till the present day) were
added to the kingdom of Wessex. The year 577 was of immense importance
in the history of the Saxon progress. In that year a great battle was
fought at Deorham, in Gloucestershire, about ten miles east of Bristol.
There were arrayed on the one side Ceawlin and his brother Cuthwine, on
the other three British kings, Coinmail and Condidan and Farinmail, all
of whom were slain. Three great cities of Roman foundation (“ceastra”
as the Chronicle calls them) were the price of victory: they were
Gloucester, Cirencester and Bathanceaster or Bath. All historians are
agreed as to the importance of this victory, which not only added
Gloucester and (probably) part of Somerset to the West-Saxon kingdom,
but by cutting off the Cymry of “West Wales” (Devon and Cornwall) from
their brethren north of the Bristol Channel practically ensured their
eventual if slow submission.
“In 584 Ceawlin and Cutha fought with the Britons in the place that
is called Fethan-lea,[29] and Cutha was slain, and Ceawlin took many
‘towns’ and innumerable quantities of booty and departed in anger to
his own land.” The chronicler seems to be here telling us of a Saxon
reverse. Though Ceawlin captured many towns and took vast heaps of
spoil he lost his son in the great battle and departed in wrath,
assuredly in effect defeated, to his own land. After defeat came
apparently domestic treason and civil broils. The entries for 591 to
593 show us the proclamation of a certain Ceolric, brother or nephew
of Ceawlin, and a battle in 592 evidently not with the Britons, but
between Saxon and Saxon, fought at Wodnesbeorge,[30] which resulted in
the “driving out” of Ceawlin. Next year (593) Ceawlin with two others,
probably princes of his house, named Cuichelm and Crida “perished”.[31]
The wording of the annal shows pretty plainly that they all died a
violent death, whether on the battlefield or by assassination, whether
as friends or foes, it is impossible to say; but there can be no doubt
that the sun of Ceawlin’s fortunes, which had at one time shone so
splendidly, set in clouds and storms.
In 597 (apparently on the death of Ceolric) Ceolwulf, nephew of
Ceawlin, “began to reign over the West Saxons, and he fought
continually and successfully either with Englishmen or with Welshmen
or with Picts or with Scots”. He was, however, reigning at the time of
Augustine’s mission, and with that event the historical interest which
has been slightly stirred by the story of the West Saxons’ advance is
transferred to another quarter. Throughout the seventh century Kent and
Mercia and pre-eminently Northumbria claim our attention so absorbingly
that we cannot spare much thought for the obscure annals of Wessex.
Concerning the two Northumbrian kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, we have
no information in the Chronicle for the first hundred years after the
landing of Hengest and Horsa. We are then under the year told that Ida
(descended in the ninth generation from Woden) was the founder of the
royal line of Northumbria; that he built Bebbanburh (Bamburgh) and that
this celebrated fortress was in the first instance surrounded with a
fence and afterwards with a wall. The chronicler then tells us that
in 560, on the death of Ida, Aelle (eleventh in descent from Woden)
began to reign over Northumbria and reigned for [nearly] thirty years.
The chronicler here either wilfully or inadvertently has suppressed
something of the truth. From his language one might have conjectured
that Aelle was of the lineage of Ida, and had succeeded peaceably to
his ancestor. Instead of this peaceable succession, however, we know
from other sources that we have here to deal with two rival kingly
lines, whose feuds and reconciliations make an important chapter in
Northumbrian history. The true situation was this: essentially the
kings of Ida’s line were rulers of Bernicia, while Aelle and his
descendants ruled Deira. That is to say: from their steep rock-palace
of Bamburgh the sons of Ida reigned by ancestral right over all the
eastern portion of the lands between Tyne and Forth, between the wall
of Hadrian and the wall of Antoninus. Similarly Aelle and his sons,
firmly settled in the great Roman city of Eburacum, governed the
country between Tyne and Humber; but each king ever aspired to extend
his sway over the other kingdom and often succeeded for a while in
doing so. Thus we have constant vicissitudes but a general tendency
towards the union of the two kingdoms into one Northumbria, which obeys
now an “Iding,” now an “Aelling” ruler. What strifes and commotions
may have attended the transition from one line to another we can only
in part discern. We are only obscurely told that in 588 Aelle’s line
was ousted, and that Ethelric the son, and after him Ethelfrith the
grandson of Ida reigned over all Northumbria.
* * * * *
3. We now come to the British version of the conquest. Though a
nation is naturally reluctant to tell the story of its own defeat,
we might have expected to receive from a comparatively civilised and
Christianised people, such as the Romano-Britons of the fifth century,
some intelligible literary history of so important an event as the
Teutonic conquest of their island. This expectation, however, is
dismally disappointed. We have practically nothing from the vanquished
people, but the lamentations of the sixth century author Gildas, and
the obviously fable-tainted narratives of the puzzle-headed Nennius of
the eighth century.
Gildas, who obtained from after ages the surname of “the Wise,” seems
to have been a native of Scottish Strathclyde and was born early in the
sixth century; he became a monk and at the age of forty-four wrote what
Bede truly calls “a tearful discourse concerning the ruin of Britain”.
His object in this discourse was to rebuke the ungodliness of his
countrymen and to remind them of the tokens of the Divine wrath which
they had already received. He is consequently, for our purpose, a most
disappointing writer. We go to him for history and we get a sermon,
but we ought in fairness to remember that he never proposed to give us
anything else. A large part of his treatise consists of reproductions
of the denunciatory passages of the old Hebrew prophets: a more
interesting section, but one outside our present purpose, consists
of fierce invectives against five wicked, or at least unfriendly,
kings of Wales. But there are a few chapters, the only ones that now
concern us, in which, in pathetic tones, he tells us something as to
the circumstances of the invasion of his country. He harks back to the
departure from Britain of the usurper Maximus (383), to which, rather
than to the later usurpation of Constantine, he traces her defenceless
condition. Stripped of the multitude of brave young men who followed
the fortunes of Maximus and never returned, and being themselves
ignorant of war, the Britons were “trampled under foot by two savage
nations from beyond seas, namely the Scots from the north-west and
the Picts from the north”. The description of the invaders as coming
from beyond the seas is important. The term “Scots” at this time and
for four centuries afterwards means primarily the inhabitants of the
north of Ireland, and only secondarily the offshoot from that race who
settled in Argyll and the Isles. These invaders, of course, were as
Gildas calls them “_transmarini_”: but it is possible that the Picts
also, some of whom we know to have been settled in Wigtonshire, came
across the shallow land-girdled waters of Solway Firth, instead of
attacking the yet undemolished wall, and thus that they too seemed to
the dwellers in North-west Britain to be coming from “beyond the seas”.
According to Gildas the Britons sent an embassy to Rome, piteously
imploring help against the invaders. The Romans came, drove out the
barbarians and exhorted the inhabitants to build a wall between the
two seas, which they accordingly did, from Forth to Clyde, building it
only of turf. A fresh invasion followed, a second embassy, again utter
rout and slaughter of the enemy, but, alas! there came also a solemn
warning from the Romans that they could not wear out their strength in
these constant expeditions for the deliverance of Britain, and that its
inhabitants must henceforth look to their own right arms for safety;
but nevertheless before they abandoned them they would help them to
build a wall, this time of stone not of turf, on the line between Tyne
and Solway. Moreover, they built a line of towers along the coast right
down to the southern shore where their ships were wont to be stationed,
and then they said farewell to their allies, as men who expected never
to see them again.
All this part of Gildas’s story is quite untrustworthy. No one who
has carefully studied the architecture of the two walls and the
inscriptions along their course will attribute their origin or even
any important restorations of them, to those troublous years of dying
Rome, the years between 390 and 440. Gildas is here evidently retailing
the legend which had sprung up among an ignorant and half-barbarised
people as to the great works of the foreigner in their land, and
he has not only in this matter “darkened counsel by words without
knowledge,” but he has grievously misled his worthy follower Bede, who
is brought into hopeless perplexity by his attempt to reconcile his
own more correct information about the Roman walls with the unsound
Welsh traditions or conjectures which he found in Gildas. The tearful
narrative proceeds: There is more misery in Britain: civil war is
added to barbarian invasion, and food, save such as can be procured
by hunting, vanishes out of the land. In 446 the poor remnants of the
Britons send their celebrated letter to that Roman general whose name
was at the time most famous among men: the letter which began, “To
Aetius,[32] thrice consul, the groans of the Britons,” and went on to
say, “The barbarians drive us to the sea: the sea drives us back on
the barbarians: we have but a choice between two modes of dying, either
to have our throats cut or to be drowned”. But not even this piteous
request brought help, for Aetius was too busily occupied with his wars
against Attila and the Huns to be able to spare thought or men for
the defence of Britain. However, pressed by the pangs of hunger, the
Britons grew bolder and even achieved some small measure of success
against their enemies. The impudent Hibernian robbers returned to their
homes; the Picts at their end of the island remained quiet for a time,
though both nations soon began again their plundering forays. But with
success came luxury, drunkenness, envy, quarrelsomeness, falsehood, all
the signs of a demoralised people. And then for the punishment of the
nation came first a pestilence so terrible that the living scarcely
sufficed to bury the dead, and then, direst plague of all, the fatal
resolution to call in foreign aid.
“A rumour was spread that their inveterate enemies were moving for
their utter extermination. A council was called to consider the best
means of repelling their fatal and oft-repeated invasions and ravages.
Then all the councillors, together with the proud tyrant,[33] with
blinded souls, devised this defence (say rather ruin) for their
country, that those most ferocious and ill-famed Saxons--a race hateful
to God and man--should be invited into the island (as one might
‘invite’ a wolf into the sheepfold) in order to beat back the northern
natives. Never was a step taken more ruinous or more bitter than this.
Oh, the depth of these men’s blindness! Oh, the desperate and foolish
dulness of their minds! ‘Foolish are the princes of Zoan, giving unto
Pharaoh senseless counsel.’[34] Then that horde of cubs burst forth
from the den of their mother, the lioness, in three _cyuls_ (keels),
as their language calls them, or as we should say, ‘long-ships’. They
relied on favourable omens and on a certain prophecy which had been
made to them, in which it was predicted that for 300 years they should
occupy the land towards which their prows were pointed, and for half of
that time they should lay it waste by frequent ravages. Thus, at the
bidding of that unlucky tyrant did they first fix their terrible claws
into the eastern part of the island, pretending that they were going
to fight for the deliverance of the country, but in truth intending to
capture it for themselves. Then the aforesaid mother-lioness, learning
how the first brood had prospered, sent another and more numerous array
of her cubs, who, borne hither in barks, joined themselves to these
treacherous allies.”
Space fails us to repeat in his own words the whole of the author’s
pitiful story. Somewhat condensed it amounts to this: The strangers
claimed that liberal rations should be given them in consideration
of the great dangers which they ran. The request was granted and
“shut the dog’s mouth” for a time. But soon they began to complain
of the insufficiency of these rations: they invented all sorts of
grievances against their hosts, and used these as a justification
for breaking their covenant with the British king, and roaming with
ravage all over the island. “The flame kindled by that sacrilegious
band spread desolation over nearly all the land till at last its red
and savage tongue licked the coasts of the western sea.” The towns
[_coloniæ_] were levelled to the ground with battering rams; the
farmers [_coloni_], with the rulers of the Church, with the priests
and people, were laid low by the flashing swords of the barbarians or
perished in the devouring flames. Coping-stone and battlement, altars
and columns, fragments of corpses covered with clots of gore, were all
piled together in the middle of the ruined towns, as in a horrible
wine-press. Burial there was none, save under the ruins of the houses
or in the maw of some beast of prey or ravenous bird. Some of the
miserable remnant who had escaped to the mountains were caught there
and slain in heaps. Others, pressed by hunger, submitted and became
slaves of the conquerors; others fled beyond the sea. A very few who
had fled to the mountains, there on the tops of precipitous cliffs
or in the depths of impenetrable forests succeeded in dragging out a
life, precarious truly and full of terrors, but still a life in their
fatherland.
At last the tide turned. Some of the invaders returned to their
own homes, and the unsubdued mountaineers saw the remnant of their
countrymen flocking to them from every quarter and beseeching them
to save them from extermination. A little band of patriots was thus
formed, under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man of modest
temper but of high descent, and in fact the only Roman sprung from
the wearers of the purple who had survived the storm of the invasion.
Under this leader the patriots dared to challenge the invaders to a
pitched battle, which, by the favour of the Lord, resulted in their
victory. From that time the struggle went on with varying fortune, now
the citizens, now the enemy triumphing, till the year of the siege of
Mount Badon, which was also the year of the birth of Gildas, and from
which forty-four years had elapsed to the time of his present writing.
That was the last and greatest slaughter of “the scoundrels”. From that
time onwards external war had ceased, and for a space the hearts of all
men, delivered from despair and chastened by adversity, turned to the
Lord, and all men, whether kings or private persons, whether bishops or
simple ecclesiastics, kept their proper ranks and orders in the state.
Of late, however, on the decease of the men of that generation, morals
had again declined, anarchy had begun to prevail, and owing to the
frequent occurrence of civil wars, the cities were no longer inhabited
as securely as of old.
Gildas then proceeds to describe further the demoralisation of
his countrymen, and especially the outrageous vices of the five
contemporary British kings, Constantine, Caninus, Vortipor, Cuneglas,
and Maglocunus (or Maelgwn), upon all of whom he pours forth the vials
of his righteous indignation; but into this part of his discourse there
is no need for us to follow him. However little to our taste may be the
somewhat inflated rhetoric of this author, it is important always to
remember that he lived about two centuries nearer to the Saxon conquest
than our next authority on the subject, Bede, and we must gratefully
acknowledge that he does give us a few valuable facts of which we
should otherwise be ignorant. His description of the horrors of the
invasion, though highly coloured, is sufficiently paralleled by the
well-attested events of the later Danish conquest to be not altogether
improbable. His mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the modest descendant
of emperors (perhaps of Maximus or the usurper Constantine), and the
brave leader of revolt against the invaders, looks like historical
fact, and the story of the British triumph at Mount Badon is not made a
whit less probable by the patriotic silence of the Chronicle concerning
a Saxon disaster. Both the place and the date of that great battle have
been the subjects of long debate. Mons Badonicus used to be thought to
represent Bath, and after a good deal of discussion this identification
seems again to be coming into favour.
The sentence in which Gildas appears to connect the date of the
battle with his own birth is almost hopelessly obscure and the text
is probably corrupt; but on the whole it seems most probable that
he meant to say, as above suggested: “The battle of Mount Badon was
fought forty-four years ago, and in that year I was born”. The _Annales
Cambriæ_ (a compilation of the tenth century) give 516 for the year
of the battle, a date which would fix the composition of the tearful
discourse to 560. Mommsen prefers 500 for the date of the birth of
Gildas. In any event there is a strong inducement to connect at least
a part of the long period of comparative peace which, according to
Gildas, followed the battle of Mount Badon with the confessedly
uneventful reign of Cynric, the West Saxon.
* * * * *
We now pass on to the other writer of British origin who dealt with the
history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest--namely, _Nennius_. If one has to
speak in rather severe terms of the literary quality of this writer’s
work and of the value of his testimony as a historian, it must be
remembered in extenuation of his many faults that he lived at a time
and in a nation in which literary excellence and the acquisition of
accurate knowledge of the past were made well-nigh impossible by the
hard pressure of daily life, brutalised and barbarised as it was by
perpetual wars both from without and from within. We shall have again
to notice the same phenomenon of the utter decay of the historical and
literary faculty in a highly cultured people when the Danes ravaged
the monasteries of Northumbria, and it is but justice to these poor
stammerers of a vanished age to remember how much more easily a nation
might then be deprived of its whole literary heritage than can ever now
be the case since the invention of printing.
There have been long and sharp discussions as to the age, the country,
and even the personality of the author who is generally known as
Nennius. The following pages represent the chief conclusions arrived at
by a German student of Celtic literature, Professor Zimmer, who in his
book, _Nennius Vindicatus_, has surely vindicated his client’s right
to exist, though he admits as fully as any one that client’s terrible
deficiencies as a historian. We may now, then, venture to assert
that Nennius, the author of the _Historia Brittonum_, was born about
the middle of the eighth century, that he lived in South-East Wales,
probably near the borders of Brecon and Radnor, that he wrote his book
in or about the year 796, and that it was subjected, about 810, to a
very early revision by a scribe who calls himself Samuel, and who lived
in North Wales. For some reason or other the book had considerable
popularity both in England and on the continent, especially in
Brittany, but it suffered much at the hands of ignorant transcribers,
and a narrative, not originally very lucid, has in some places been
made almost unintelligible, owing to the transposition of some of the
leaves of manuscript which have fallen out and been replaced in a wrong
order. The restoration of these wrongly sorted chapters to their proper
place in the book is one of Professor Zimmer’s greatest achievements.
The work of an ill-informed and uncritical scribe such as Nennius
evidently was,[35] subject also to all these adversities in the course
of its transmission to us, and originally written three centuries
and a half after the events recorded, might be considered so poor an
authority as to be unworthy of our further notice. But, in the first
place, we have practically no other British authority save Gildas for
the events which interest us so deeply; and, secondly, the author has
at one point incorporated in his work a document much earlier and much
more valuable than his own. This is the so-called “Genealogies of the
Kings,” which occupy sections 57 to 65 of the _Historia Brittonum_, and
which, though they consist chiefly of strings of names, the ancestors
of Anglian kings, are of a comparatively early date, since they bring
the history down only to 679 (being thus slightly earlier even than
Bede), and have this especial interest for us that we have here,
imbedded in a passionately Celtic work, information otherwise lacking
as to the rulers of the Anglian kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia in
the sixth century.
Probably the most valuable piece of information conveyed to us by
Nennius, relating, it is true, rather to the history of Wales than
to that of England, is derived from these same _Genealogiæ Regum_.
It is to the effect that Maelgwn, King of Gwynedd (North Wales), was
descended in the fifth degree from a certain Cunedag, who with eight
sons marched southward from Manau Guotodin (which is identified with
the district of Lothian), and drove “the Scots” from the region of
Gwynedd, to which they never returned. This southward march took place,
he says, 146 years before Maelgwn reigned. Now, Maelgwn, who was one
of the five kings so fiercely denounced by Gildas, is a historical
personage who certainly reigned in North Wales and whose death is dated
in 547. He is also a link in the chain of Welsh kings who continued
to reign so long as Wales had any independent rulers. The statement,
therefore, amounts to this, that a little before 400, say in 380, or
about the date of the usurpation of Maximus, a chieftain named Cunedag
with his eight sons, and, doubtless, a large army, marched right across
Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Menai Straits, drove out the
“Scots,” that is the Irish invaders who were in possession of the
country, and established a dynasty which endured for nine centuries
(380–1283), till Llewelyn and David, the last royal descendants of
Cunedag, were slain by the order of Edward Plantagenet. This is a
fact unrelated to any other that has been handed down to us, but
which suggests the reflection how many great movements of population,
all memory of which has perished, may have been going forward in our
island during these mist-covered fifth and sixth centuries of our
era. Moreover, the fact that we have here apparently an instance of
a Pictish king conducting a campaign of extermination against the
“Scots,” though these Scots were in Wales, throws some doubt on the
conventional theory that all the calamities of undefended Britain were
due to a war in which the Picts and the Scots were acting in concert.
As to the actual events of the Anglo-Saxon conquest Nennius leads us
into a perfect jungle-growth of legend and fable, but adds very little
to our real information. He repeats the name of the unhappy Vortigern
and blackens it with all sorts of foul crimes, such as murder and
incest. He blends his narrative with alleged scandals, not only untrue
but historically impossible, against the saintly Germanus. He hints
that there was rivalry and discord between Vortigern and Ambrosius; and
here we can neither confirm nor refute his statement, though certainly
the story as told by Gildas does not give us the impression that they
were contemporaries. He tells us that when Hengest sent for the second
draft of his followers they came over in sixteen keels, and that in one
of those keels was “a girl fair of face and very stately in person,
the daughter of Hengest” (the name Rowena is not mentioned till a
much later age). The damsel serves the king with strong drink. “Satan
enters into the heart of Vortigern, and through an interpreter whose
name was Ceretic [this little detail looks like genuine tradition] he
asks for the maiden in marriage, promising to give half his kingdom in
exchange, and he does in fact give her the district of Kent, though a
prince named Guoyrancgon was then reigning there and knew not that he
was being thus handed over into the power of the pagans.” Hengest then
proceeded to give his new son-in-law fatherly advice, which he assured
him would effectually secure his kingdom: “I will invite my son and
his nephew, for they are warlike men, that they may fight against the
Scots, and do thou give unto them those regions which are in the north,
next to the wall which is called Guaul”. Obeying this recommendation,
Vortigern invited them and they came, “to wit Octha and Ebissa with
forty keels; but whilst they were sailing round the Picts they laid
waste the Orkney islands, and came and occupied many countries beyond
the Frisian Sea [the Firth of Forth?] as far as the boundary of the
Picts”. A dark and difficult passage truly; but there is some reason
to think that there may be in it a germ of historical truth, and that
there was really a Jutish settlement in Scotland.
After this the story relapses into mere romance. We hear of enchanted
towers, of a wonder-working child who was afterwards known as the
enchanter Merlin, and who apparently calls up the spirit of the dead
Ambrosius. Then we are introduced to Vortimer, the brave son of
Vortigern, who defeats the barbarians in four great battles; but,
dying soon after, he desires to be buried on a hill above the place
where they had first landed, since he has a prophetic intimation that
they shall not dwell in the land for ever, but shall one day be driven
forth; a prophecy the fulfilment of which still lingers. Discouraged by
the victories of Vortimer, Hengest now resorts to stratagem, and calls
for a conference to which both Britons and Saxons are to come unarmed,
and at which they shall establish a league of lasting friendship.
Privately, however, he orders his followers to hide each man a small
knife under his foot in the middle of his boot, and when he calls out
“_Eu Saxones nimmath tha saxas_” (Ye Saxons grasp the daggers), out
flash the deadly weapons; the 300 senators of Vortigern are slain, and
he himself is taken prisoner and loaded with chains till he consents to
give Hengest Essex and Sussex for his ransom. The story ends with the
death of Vortigern. “Some say that he died a broken-hearted wanderer,
hated by all his people, and others that the earth opened and swallowed
him up on the night on which the enchanted citadel was burned.”
The traitorous conference and Hengest’s cry to his followers seem to
have about them a slight savour of probability, but it will probably
be the opinion of any one who carefully peruses the chapters of
Nennius of which a slight outline has here been traced, that they are
for the most part of as much historical value as the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments. But the elements of which this strange work is composed
are of various value. After a sketch of the life of St. Patrick which
is taken from a well-known source and which need not here detain us,
Nennius gives an important paragraph which seems to be taken from
his earlier Northumbrian authority, and, if so, is entitled to more
respectful attention: “On the death of Hengest, his son Octha crossed
from the northern region of Britain to the kingdom of Kent. From him
are descended the present kings of that country. Then did Arthur fight
against the Saxons in those days along with the leaders of the Britons,
but he himself was leader in the wars.”[36] The author then proceeds
to give us the sites of twelve great battles fought by Arthur. Of the
eighth, he says it was “in the castle of Guinnion, whereat Arthur
carried on his shoulders the image of the holy Mary, ever a Virgin, and
the pagans were turned to flight in that day, and a great slaughter was
made among them by the power of Christ and his Virgin Mother. The ninth
battle was fought in the city of the legion (_Castra Legionis_).[37]...
The twelfth was fought at Mount Badon, at which 960 men fell in one day
at one onslaught by Arthur, and no one felled them but he alone, and in
all the wars he stood forth as conqueror.”
The scenes of the twelve battles fought by Arthur have been variously
identified, some authors placing them in South Wales and some in the
Scottish lowlands. Except as regards Castra Legionis and Mons Badonis,
there is something to be said for the latter set of identifications,
which seem to agree with the Northumbrian origin of the document quoted
by Nennius.
Is there any historical truth in the personality of Arthur, or is he
a mere creature of romance? The answer to that much-debated question
depends on the degree of credit which, upon a review of the whole case,
we may consider ourselves at liberty to attach to these few sentences
of Nennius. All the rest that has been said concerning him, whether by
pseudo-historians, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, by avowed romancers
like Sir Thomas Malory, or by poets like Tennyson, is confessedly
but the product of imagination, some of it very beautiful, some of
it rather foolish; but Nennius, and he alone, can answer for us the
question whether Arthur ever really was.
It is believed that the reader has now been introduced to all the
authentic information which has been handed down to us concerning
the great revolution or rather series of revolutions which changed
Britannia into Engla-land. The chroniclers of the twelfth century,
William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Florence of Worcester, for
the most part honourable and truth-seeking men, have dealt with these
historical materials, each after his own fashion, seeking to weave them
into a connected and harmonious narrative; but it is generally agreed
by those who have carefully studied their works that they knew no more
than we as to the events of the fifth and sixth centuries, and that
historical science can gain little or nothing, for this part of the
history of England, from a study of their chronicles. Much less, of
course, does it behove us to give any attention to the mere romances
which Geoffrey of Monmouth and the storytellers of his school imagined
about the fictitious kings of England, from Brut to Lud. Already in
the seventeenth century these sports of fancy were beginning to be
appraised at their true value by scholars like Milton, who rehearsed
but evidently did not believe them. Now, happily, no English historian
thinks it necessary to waste his time and the time of his readers by
proving their utter unreality. Still, no doubt the mind of every
historical student longs for a continuous and rightly co-ordinated
narrative of events, and dislikes to see the evidence presented in
such disjointed fashion as that in which it has been here submitted to
the reader. This however appears to be for the present a disagreeable
necessity. Great danger seems to attend every attempt to make one
plain story out of the various materials supplied to us by Bede, the
Chronicle, Gildas and Nennius. It may be that the labours of future
investigators may enable them to achieve this result; but the time is
not yet.
One or two great landmarks may perhaps be accurately discerned through
the mist. The united testimony of Prosper Tiro and the biographer of
Germanus seems to justify us in asserting that the Saxon assaults upon
Britain were contemporaneous with those of the Picts, and never really
ceased throughout the first half of the fifth century. The allusion
in the Chronicle to a burial of treasure and flight of the Romans in
418 perhaps refers to some otherwise unrecorded invasion of the Saxons
and to a consequent emigration of the Romanised Britons to Gaul. That
such an emigration on a large scale must have taken place somewhat
early in the century seems to follow as a necessary consequence from
the fact that the Armorican peninsula received then that name of
Britannia, Bretagne or Brittany which in one shape or other it has ever
since retained, and that already in 469 we find Apollinaris Sidonius
speaking, as a matter of course, of the inhabitants of that region as
Britons.[38]
There was probably an invasion of Kent in 441 by a Teutonic tribe,
whom we may perhaps call Jutes, and this invasion was less of a mere
piratical raid and more of an abiding conquest than the previous
expeditions. We notice the same difference three centuries later in the
Danish invasions. Vortigern is probably an historical character, and
his marriage with the daughter of the Teutonic chief was the sort of
event which might well strike the minds of contemporaries and linger
long in the songs of later generations. Probably, however, he was not a
“king”--Roman institutions would hardly have allowed of the formation
so early of a regal dynasty--but a great and powerful landowner who
armed his dependants and wielded practically something like kingly
power. His invocation of Jutish aid to repel a Pictish invasion may
be historically true, but far too much has doubtless been made of
the whole affair by British fabulists, anxious to excuse the failure
of their countrymen and determined to make the luckless Vortigern
the scapegoat of their nation. “We were betrayed!” is the natural
exclamation of every vanquished people.
Ambrosius Aurelianus, the descendant of Roman wearers of the purple,
is almost certainly a historical personage, though it is impossible to
fix the time and place of his operations. So, too, with a shade less
of probability is Arthur, or Artorius, whom we may fairly credit with
having stayed for a time the torrent of the Saxon advance by the great
victory of the Mons Badonicus won at some time between 500 and 516. In
both these British champions, however, we ought probably to see not
Cymric kings, but Romano-British generals, wielding a power like that
of the Roman _duces_ and _comites_, and perhaps even commanding bodies
of men trained in some of the traditions of the Roman legion. Most
important, on this view of the case, are the words of Nennius himself:
“Arthur fought against the Saxons along with the kings of the Britons,
but he himself was _Dux Bellorum_”.
The short and business-like entries of the Chronicle as to the
successive victories which marked the extension of the West Saxon
kingdom seem in the main worthy of belief, though we cannot rely
with much confidence on the dates attached to every entry. It does
not surprise us to find no record of the Saxon defeat at the Mons
Badonicus, nor, as has been said, does such silence lessen the
probability of its having actually occurred. Ceawlin, the hero of the
West Saxons, is undoubtedly a real figure in history, and we may in
the main accept with confidence the history of his battles, especially
of his crowning victory at Deorham, which undid the work of Mount
Badon, and, by giving the command of the Severn Valley and the Bristol
Channel to the Saxons, finally separated “West Wales” from Wales. The
domestic strife which disastrously ended his career and hurled him from
his throne is pretty clearly hinted at in the Chronicle, and we may
be allowed to conjecture that it was the continuance of this internal
discord which prevented for a long while the further development of
Wessex; which made the rising power of Mercia instead of the West Saxon
state the protagonist in the conflict with Wales; and which struck the
annals of the latter kingdom in the seventh century with barrenness.
When Ceawlin died, in 593, already the great pope who was to reunite
Britain to Christian Europe was presiding over the Roman Church, and we
may be said now at last to see land, the _terra firma_ of authentic and
continuous history.
On reviewing the whole course of the Teutonic conquest of our island
we cannot fail to be struck by the different rates of speed at which
that conquest proceeded at different times. By about the middle of the
sixth century the invaders seem to have possessed themselves of nearly
all the country lying to the east of a line drawn from Berwick-on-Tweed
through Lichfield to Salisbury. After that period, however, their
advance, never very rapid, becomes extremely slow. Wales the Saxons
never conquered. “West Wales,” as Devon and Cornwall were called, were
not subdued till the ninth century. Cumberland, which formed part of
the Celtic kingdom of Strathclyde, does not seem to have become English
till the close of the seventh century, and even then was very loosely
joined to the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. It is to be hoped that
we may one day obtain some clearer light on the reason for this great
difference in the rate of conquest between the eastern and western
halves of the island; how far it may have been due to the different
resisting powers of two Celtic races, the “Brythonic” and “Goidelic”;
whether earlier Saxon settlements along the shore of the German Ocean
facilitated the work of the new invaders; or whether the flat alluvial
lands of the east, more easily overrun by mounted bands of freebooters
than the rough mountainous country of the west, were the chief factors
in the problem.
A question which has been often and fiercely discussed and on which
probably the last word has not yet been said is: “How far did the great
movements of invasion which we have been discussing amount to an
actual replacement of one population by another?” or, in other words:
“Are the Englishmen of to-day pure Saxons and Angles or partly Celts?”
In considering this question two factors have to be considered: (1) the
amount of new population imported into the country; and (2) the degree
to which the invaders carried the process of extermination of the older
inhabitants. As to the first point we are furnished with extremely
scanty information by all our authorities. The mythical “three keels”
and “five keels,” which the chroniclers speak of as containing the
whole forces of the invaders, point only to a scanty number of
warriors, accompanied probably by their horses, but certainly not by
their wives and children. The story of the legendary Rowena, on the
other hand, suggests--what is doubtless the truth--that the invaders,
once established in the land, sent speedily for the wives and daughters
whom they had left by the Elbe or the Baltic. One late authority speaks
of the Saxons as inviting over so many of their kith and kin that an
island which they had previously inhabited was left almost void of
people. Undoubtedly every indication of language and of later social
state points to the conclusion that the invasions were not mere raids
of freebooting warriors, but great national migrations such as were
the fashion in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ, such as
Claudian describes as headed by Alaric and such as Ennodius paints in
his laudation of Theodoric.
Moreover, even for such a great national displacement we may find a
sufficient cause in the condition of central Europe between 432 and
452. During all these years the fear of the mighty Hunnish war-lord
Attila lay like a nightmare upon Europe; not upon the Romanised men
of the southern cities only, but quite as much upon the Teuton in his
forests, for the Teuton loathed the very smell of the Hun, and, when
forced to submit to him for a time, chafed under his yoke and as soon
as possible escaped from his abhorred neighbourhood. Now when we find
it stated by the Roman ambassadors to his court[39] that Attila had by
the year 448 made “all the islands in the ocean” subject to him, we who
know that the coasts of the Baltic, of Denmark and the Scandinavian
peninsula were all looked upon as islands by the classical geographers,
may not improbably conjecture that the pressure of the Hun was felt by
the Angle and the Saxon as it had been felt before by his kinsmen the
Goth and the Burgundian. We have every reason therefore to conjecture,
if we cannot hold it for proved, that there was an immense transference
of Teutonic family life from the lands bordering on the Elbe to the
banks of the Thames, the Humber and the Tyne.
But it is on the second factor of the equation, on the extent of
denudation of the older, the Celtic stratum of the people, that the
controversy chiefly turns. The theory of the virtual extermination
of the Britons from at least the eastern half of the island is thus
stated by its most illustrious champion, Freeman: “Though the literal
extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every reason
to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of these parts of Britain
which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been
as nearly extirpated as a nation can be”. In support of this theory
Freeman appeals to the absolutely Teutonic type of the language
spoken by Englishmen before the Norman conquest, to the Teutonic
character of their institutions and to the terrible entry in the
Chronicle concerning the capture of Anderida: “491. Now Aella and Cissa
encompassed Andredes-ceaster and slew off all that dwelt therein: nor
was there afterward a single Briton left there.”
It cannot be said that the tendency of recent inquirers is in
favour of so strong an assertion as this of the entire obliteration
of the British element in any part of our island. Physiological
investigations, the measurement of skulls and the examination of
graves, do not confirm the hypothesis of the absolute disappearance
anywhere of the pre-Saxon races. The study of institutions does not
confirm it: the more closely these are examined the more does the
conviction grow that some Roman or Celtic elements are imbedded in
the generally Teutonic character of the Anglo-Saxon state. And even
the celebrated passage concerning the slaughter at Anderida is not,
perhaps, so conclusive an argument as it appears at first sight.
Nothing is said there which necessarily implies a determination to
destroy a whole people. We may see in it only the cruel action of
assailants maddened by the stubborn defence of a fortress which may
have long held the Saxons at bay; and even the fact of the emphatic
mention in the Chronicle of this one bloody deed seems to imply that
it was not the usual accompaniment of Saxon conquest.
When we examine carefully the pleadings on both sides we see that the
disputants are not so far apart as they suppose themselves to be.
No one denies that the general framework of society in Anglo-Saxon
Britain, like the language, was Teutonic, or that the masters of
the land were English and looked upon the Romanised Celts whom they
called _Wealas_ as an alien and inferior race. But, on the other hand,
Freeman himself admits, though reluctantly, that the majority of the
British women would be spared to be the wives or concubines of the
invaders, and nearly all the slaves to be their thralls. This admission
is fatal to the claim of the ordinary Englishman of to-day, after
all the upheavings and down-sinkings of the various social strata,
to be a pure-blooded Teuton. The evidence of language tends in the
same direction. It is certainly surprising--and the advocates of the
extirpation-theory have a right to point triumphantly to the fact--how
small a number of Romano-Celtic words crept into the language spoken
here before the Norman Conquest. But the words which did thus survive
are, for the most part, such words as women would use in connexion with
the affairs of the household, words like rasher and rug. When we thus
review the circumstances of the Saxon conquest, and especially when
we remember the immense influx of Celtic blood which we have received
in later centuries from the Gael and the Erse folk, we may perhaps
conclude that we should accept and glory in the term Anglo-Celt, rather
than Anglo-Saxon, as the fitting designation of our race.