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A HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
by
CHARLES OMAN,
Fellow of All Souls' College,
and Deputy-Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford;
Author of
"Warwick the Kingmaker;" "England in the Nineteenth Century;"
"A History of Greece;" "The Art of War in the Middle Ages;"
"The History of the Peninsular War," etc.
Eleventh Edition.
London:
Edward Arnold.
1904.
Printed by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles.
PREFACE
When adding one more to the numerous histories of England which have
appeared of late years, the author feels that he must justify his
conduct. Ten years of teaching in the Honour School of Modern History
in the University of Oxford have convinced him that there may still be
room for a single-volume history of moderate compass, which neither
cramps the earlier annals of our island into a few pages, nor expands
the last two centuries into unmanageable bulk. He trusts that his
book may be useful to the higher forms of schools, and for the pass
examinations of the Universities. The kindly reception which his
_History of Greece_ has met both here and in America, leads him to hope
that a volume constructed on the same scale and the same lines may be
not less fortunate.
He has to explain one or two points which may lead to criticism. In
Old-English names he has followed the correct and original forms,
save in some few cases, such as Edward and Alfred, where a close
adherence to correctness might savour of pedantry. He wishes the maps
to be taken, not as superseding the use of an atlas, but as giving
boundaries, local details, and sites in which many atlases will be
found wanting.
Finally, he has to give his best thanks to friends who were good
enough to correct certain sections of the book--especially to Sir
William Anson, Warden of All Souls' College, Mr. C. H. Turner of
Magdalen College, and Mr. F. Haverfield of Christ Church. But most of
all does he owe gratitude to the indefatigable compiler of the Index,
whose hands made a burden into a pleasure.
OXFORD,
_January 25, 1895_.
PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION.
The fact that this book has passed through nine editions in seven years
seems to show that it was not altogether written in vain, and has
answered the purpose for which it was written.
The first edition carried the history of Great Britain to the year
1885. I have now prolonged it to the year 1902. The termination
of the long reign of Queen Victoria, the end of the century, and
the long-delayed pacification of South Africa, appeared to provide
landmarks to which the narrative ought to be extended.
I have to thank many kind correspondents for corrections and
suggestions made during the last seven years. They will note that their
hints have not been neglected. A special word of thanks is due to the
Rev. A. Beaven of Leamington, for a very copious and useful list of
_corrigenda_, of which I have made full use.
OXFORD,
_September 15, 1902_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CELTIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN 1
II. THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH 14
III. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, AND THE RISE OF
WESSEX. 597-836 23
IV. THE DANISH INVASIONS, AND THE GREAT KINGS
OF WESSEX, 836-975 33
V. THE DAYS OF CNUT AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 51
VI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066-1087 67
VII. WILLIAM THE RED--HENRY I.--STEPHEN. 1087-1154 81
VIII. HENRY II. 1154-1189 97
IX. RICHARD I. AND JOHN. 1189-1216 114
X. HENRY III. 1216-1272 134
XI. EDWARD I. 1272-1307 148
XII. EDWARD II. 1307-1327 171
XIII. EDWARD III. 1327-1377 180
XIV. RICHARD II. 1377-1399 202
XV. HENRY IV. 1399-1413 213
XVI. HENRY V. 1413-1422 220
XVII. THE LOSS OF FRANCE. 1422-1453 231
XVIII. THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 1454-1471 245
XIX. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK. 1471-1485 260
XX. HENRY VII. 1485-1509 272
XXI. HENRY VIII., AND THE BREACH WITH ROME. 1509-1536 282
XXII. THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 1536-1553 296
XXIII. THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 1553-1558 314
XXIV. ELIZABETH. 1558-1603 322
XXV. JAMES I. 1603-1625 350
XXVI. THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. TO THE OUTBREAK
OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1625-1642 362
XXVII. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 1642-1651 380
XXVIII. CROMWELL. 1651-1660 406
XXIX. CHARLES II. 1660-1685 420
XXX. JAMES II. 1685-1688 436
XXXI. ENGLAND AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 1688-1702 445
XXXII. ANNE. 1702-1714 461
XXXIII. THE RULE OF THE WHIGS. 1714-1739 482
XXXIV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLONIAL EMPIRE
OF BRITAIN. 1739-1760 498
XXXV. GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS--THE AMERICAN
WAR. 1760-1783 532
XXXVI. THE YOUNGER PITT, AND THE RECOVERY OF
ENGLISH PROSPERITY. 1782-1793 554
XXXVII. ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1789-1802 574
XXXVIII. ENGLAND AND BONAPARTE. 1802-1815 598
XXXIX. REACTION AND REFORM. 1815-1832 633
XL. CHARTISM AND THE CORN LAWS. 1832-1852 652
XLI. THE DAYS OF PALMERSTON. 1852-1865 673
XLII. DEMOCRACY AND IMPERIALISM. 1865-1885 700
XLIII. THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1886-1901--THE
SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 1899-1902 718
XLIV. INDIA AND THE COLONIES. 1815-1902 734
INDEX 757
MAPS AND PLANS.
PAGE
THE GAELIC AND BRITISH TRIBES IN BRITAIN 3
ROMAN BRITAIN 10
ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 570 18
ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY 30
ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 900 41
FRANCE IN THE REIGN OF HENRY II. 98
THE BATTLE OF LEWES 142
THE BATTLE OF EVESHAM 145
WALES IN 1282 154
THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN 174
THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY 188
THE BATTLE OF POICTIERS 191
FRANCE AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY 194
THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT 223
THE BATTLE OF EDGEHILL 384
ENGLAND AT THE END OF 1643 388
THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR 390
THE BATTLE OF NASEBY 394
THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS, 1702 466
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM 467
SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 506
ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA, 1756 521
THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC 527
INDIA IN THE TIME OF WARREN HASTINGS 570
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1803-1814 616
EUROPE IN 1811-1812 620
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO 629
SEBASTOPOL, 1854 686
THEATRE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR OF 1899-1902 730
INDIA, 1815-1890 736
GENEALOGICAL TABLES.
PAGE
THE HOUSE OF ECGBERT 66
THE HOUSE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 80
THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION, 1292 160
THE FRENCH SUCCESSION, 1337 184
THE DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD III. 201
THE KIN OF CHARLES V. 286
THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1699 457
The HOUSE OF STUART 481
The HOUSE OF HANOVER 497
A HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
CELTIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN.
In the dim dawn of history our island was a land of wood and marsh,
broken here and there by patches of open ground, and pierced by
occasional track-ways, which threaded the forest and circled round
the edges of the impassable fen. The inhabited districts of the
country were not the fertile river-bottoms where population grew
thick in after-days; these were in primitive times nothing but sedgy
water-meadows or matted thickets. Men dwelt rather on the thinly
wooded upland, where, if the soil was poor, it was at any rate free
from the tangled undergrowth that covered the valleys. It was on the
chalk ridges of Kent or Wilts, or the moorland hills of Yorkshire or
Cornwall, rather than on the brink of the Thames or Severn, that the
British tribes clustered thick. Down by the rivers there were but small
settlements of hunters and fishers perched on some knoll that rose
above the brake and the rushes.
The earliest explorers from the south, who described the inhabitants of
Britain, seem to have noticed little difference between one wild tribe
and another. But as a matter of fact the islanders were divided into
two or perhaps three distinct races, who had passed westward into our
island at very different dates. First had come a short dark people, who
knew not the use of metals, and wielded weapons of flint and bone. They
were in the lowest grade of savagery, had not even learnt to till the
soil, and lived by fishing and hunting. They dwelt in rude huts, or
even in the caves from which they had driven out the bear and the wolf.
[Sidenote: =The Celts, Gael, and Britons.=]
Long after these primitive settlers, the first wave of the Celts,
seven or eight centuries before Christ, came flooding all over Western
Europe, and drove the earlier races into nooks and corners of the
earth. They crossed over into Britain after overrunning the lands
on the other side of the Channel, and gradually conquered the whole
island, as well as its neighbour, Erin. The Celts came in two waves;
the first, composed of the people who were called Gael, seem to have
appeared many generations before the second, who bore the name of
Britons.
The Gael are the ancestors of the people of Ireland and the Scotch
Highlands, while the Britons occupied the greater part of England and
Wales, and are the progenitors of the Welsh of to-day. The old savage
race who held the islands before the Celts appeared, were partly
exterminated and partly absorbed by the new-comers. The Celts on the
eastern side of the island remained unmixed with their predecessors;
but into the mountainous districts of the west they penetrated in less
numbers, and there the ancient inhabitants were not slain off, but
became the serfs of their conquerors. Thus the eastern shore of Britain
became a purely Celtic land; but in the districts along the shore of
the Irish Sea, where the Gael bore rule, the blood of the earlier
race remained, and the population was largely non-Celtic. There are
to this day regions where the survival of the ancient inhabitants can
be traced by the preponderance of short stature and dark hair among
the inhabitants. Many such are to be found both in South Wales and in
the Highlands of Scotland. The Gael, therefore, were of much less pure
blood than the later-coming Britons.
The Britons and their Gaelic kinsmen, though far above the degraded
tribes whom they had supplanted, still showed many signs of savagery.
They practised horrid rites of human sacrifice, in which they burnt
captives alive to their gods, cramming them into huge images of
wicker-work. But the barbarous practice which most astonished the
ancient world was their custom of marking themselves with bright blue
patterns painted with the dye of woad, and this led the Romans to give
the northern tribes, who retained the custom longest, the name of the
_Picti_, or "painted men."
[Illustration: GAEL AND BRITON.]
The Celts were a tall, robust, fair-haired race, who had reached a
certain stage of civilization. They tilled the fields and sailed the
seas, but their chief wealth consisted in great herds of cattle, which
they pastured in the forest-clearings which then constituted inhabited
Britain. They wore armour of bronze, and used brazen weapons, to which
in a later time they added iron weapons also. They delighted to adorn
their persons with "torques" or necklaces of twisted gold. Their chiefs
went out to war in chariots drawn by small shaggy horses, but alighted,
like the ancient Greeks of the Heroic Age, when the hand-to-hand
fighting began.
Like all Celtic tribes in all ages, the Britons and the Gael showed
small capacity for union. They dwelt apart in many separate tribes,
though sometimes a great and warlike chief would compel one or two
of his neighbours to do him homage. But such kingdoms usually fell
to pieces at the death of the warrior who had built them up. After
the kings and chiefs, the most important class among the Celts was
that of the Druids, a caste of priests and soothsayers, who possessed
great influence over the people. They it was who kept up the barbarous
sacrifices which we have already mentioned. Although tribal wars were
incessant, yet the Britons had learnt some of the arts of peace, and
traded with each other and with the Celts across the Channel. For
the tin of Cornwall it would seem that they made barter with the
adventurous traders who pushed their way across Gaul from the distant
Mediterranean to buy that metal, which was very rare in the ancient
world. The Britons used money of gold and of tin, on which they stamped
a barbarous copy of the devices on the coins of Philip, the great King
of Macedonia, whose gold pieces found their way in the course of trade
even to the shores of the Channel. The fact that they had discovered
the advantages of a coinage proves sufficiently that they were no
longer mere savages.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Julius Cæsar.=]
We have no materials for constructing a history of the ancient Celtic
inhabitants of Britain till the middle of the first century before
Christ, when the great Roman conqueror, Julius Cæsar, who had just
subdued northern Gaul, determined to cross the straits and invade
Britain. He wished to strike terror into its inhabitants, for the
tribes south of the Thames were closely connected with their kinsmen
on the other side of the Channel, and he suspected them of stirring up
trouble among the Gauls. Cæsar took over two legions and disembarked
near Romney (B.C. 55). The natives thronged down to the shore to oppose
him, but his veterans plunged into the shallows, fought their way to
land, and beat the Britons back into the interior. He found, however,
that the land would not be an easy conquest, for all the tribes of the
south turned out in arms against him. Therefore he took his legions
back to Gaul as the autumn drew on, vowing to return in the next year.
In B.C. 54 he brought over an army twice as large as his first
expedition, and boldly pushed into the interior. Cassivelaunus, the
greatest chief of eastern Britain, roused a confederacy of tribes
against him; but Cæsar forced the passage of the Thames, and burnt
the great stockaded village in the woods beyond that river, where his
enemy dwelt. Many of the neighbouring princes then did him homage; but
troubles in Gaul called him home again, and he left the island, taking
with him naught save a few hostages and a vague promise of tribute and
submission from the kings of Kent.
[Sidenote: =Commerce with Europe.=]
Nearly a hundred years passed before Britain was to see another Roman
army. The successors of Julius Cæsar left the island to itself, and
it was only by peaceful commerce with the provinces of Gaul that the
Britons learnt to know of the great empire that had come to be their
neighbour. But there grew up a considerable intercourse between Britain
and the continent: the Roman traders came over to sell the luxuries of
the South to the islanders, and British kings more than once visited
Rome to implore the aid of the emperor against their domestic enemies.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Claudius, A.D. 43.=]
But such aid was not granted, and the island, though perceptibly
influenced by Roman civilization, was for long years not touched by the
Roman sword. At last, in A.D. 43, Claudius Cæsar resolved to subdue the
Britons. The island was in its usual state of disorder, after the death
of a great king named Cunobelinus--Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"--who had
held down south-eastern Britain in comparative quiet and prosperity
for many years. Some of the chiefs who fared ill in the civil wars
asked Claudius to restore them, and he resolved to make their petition
an excuse for conquering the island. Accordingly his general, Aulus
Plautius, crossed the Channel, and overran Kent and the neighbouring
districts in a few weeks. So easy was the conquest that the unwarlike
emperor himself ventured over to Britain, and saw his armies cross the
Thames, and occupy Camulodunum (Colchester), which had been the capital
of King Cymbeline, and now was made a Roman colony, and re-named after
Claudius himself.
[Sidenote: =South-eastern Britain subdued.=]
The emperor returned to Rome after sixteen days spent in the island,
there to build himself a memorial arch, and to celebrate a triumph in
full form for the conquest of Britain. Aulus Plautius remained behind
with four legions, and completed the subjection of the lands which
lie between the Wash and Southampton Water, and thus formed the first
Roman province in the island. There does not seem to have been very
much serious fighting required to reduce the tribes of south-eastern
Britain; the conquerors consented to accept as their vassals those
chiefs who chose to do homage, and only used their arms against such
tribes as refused to acknowledge the emperor's suzerainty.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Boadicea.=]
Under successive governors the size of the province of Britain
continued to grow, till in the reign of Nero it had advanced up to
the line of the Severn and Humber, and included all the central and
southern counties of modern England. But the wild tribes of the Welsh
mountains and the Yorkshire moors opposed a determined resistance to
the conquerors, and did not yield till a much later date. While the
governor Suetonius Paulinus was engaged in a campaign on the Menai
Straits, against the tribe of the Ordovices, there burst out behind
him the celebrated rebellion of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea). This rising
began among the Iceni, the tribe who dwelt in what is now Norfolk and
Suffolk. They had long been governed by a vassal king; but when he
died sonless, the Romans annexed his dominions and cruelly ill-treated
his widow Boudicca and her daughters. Bleeding from the Roman rods,
the indignant queen called her tribesmen to arms, and massacred all
the Romans within her reach. All the tribes of eastern Britain rose to
aid her, and the rebels cut to pieces the Ninth Legion, and sacked the
three towns of Londinium, Verulamium, and Camulodunum,[1] slaying, it
is said, as many as 70,000 persons in their wild cruelty. But presently
the governor Paulinus returned from his campaign in Wales at the head
of his army, and in a great battle defeated and destroyed the British
hordes. Boudicca, who had led them to the field in person, slew herself
when she saw the battle lost (A.D. 61).
[Sidenote: =Agricola Governor of Britain, A.D. 78-85.=]
Southern Britain never rose again, but the Romans had great trouble
in conquering the Silurians and Ordovices of Wales, and the Brigantes
beyond the Humber. They were finally subdued by the great general
Agricola, who governed the British province from 78 to 85. This good
man was the father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, who wrote his
life--a document from which great part of our knowledge of Roman
Britain is derived. After conquering North-Wales and Yorkshire,
Agricola marched northward against the Gaelic tribes of Scotland. He
overran the Lowlands, and then pushed forward into the hills of the
Highlands. At a spot called the Graupian Mountain (_Mons Graupius_)
somewhere in Perthshire, he defeated the Caledonians, the fierce race
who dwelt beyond the Forth and Clyde, with great slaughter. It was
his purpose to conquer the whole island to its northernmost cape, and
even to subdue the neighbouring Gaels of Ireland. But ere his task was
complete the cruel and suspicious emperor Domitian called him home,
because he envied and feared his military talents.
The province of Britain remained very much as Agricola had left it,
stopping short at the Forth, and leaving the Scottish Highlands outside
the Roman pale. It was held down by three Roman legions, each of
whom watched one of the three most unruly of the British tribes; one
at Eboracum (York) curbed the Brigantes; a second at Deva (Chester)
observed the Ordovices; and a third at Isca (Caerleon-on-Usk) was
responsible for the good behaviour of the Silurians.
Agricola did much to make the Roman rule more palatable to the Britons
by his wise ordinances for the government of the province. He tried to
persuade the Celtic chiefs to learn Latin, and to take to civilized
ways of life, as their kinsmen in Gaul had done. He kept the land so
safe and well guarded that thousands of settlers from the continent
came to dwell in its towns. His efforts won much success, and for the
future, southern Britain was a very quiet province.
[Sidenote: =The Wall of Hadrian.=]
But the Caledonians to the north retained their independence, and
often raided into the Lowlands, while the Brigantes of Yorkshire still
kept rising in rebellion, and once in the reign of Hadrian massacred
the whole legion that garrisoned York. It was perhaps this disaster
that drew Hadrian himself to Britain in the course of his never-ending
travels. The emperor journeyed across the isle, and resolved to fix
the Roman boundary on a line traced across the Northumbrian moors
from Carlisle to Newcastle. There was erected the celebrated "Wall
of Hadrian," a solid stone wall drawn in front of the boundary-ditch
that marked the old frontier, and furnished with forts at convenient
intervals. This enormous work, eighty miles long, reached from sea
to sea, and was garrisoned by a number of "auxiliary cohorts,"
or regiments drawn from the subject tribes of the empire--Moors,
Spaniards, Thracians, and many more--for the Romans did not trust
British troops to hold the frontier against their own untamed kinsmen.
The legion at York remained behind to support the garrison of the wall
in case of necessity.
[Sidenote: =The Wall of Antoninus.=]
A few years later the continued trouble which the northern parts
of Britain suffered from the raids of the Caledonians, caused the
governors of the province to build another wall in advance of that
of Hadrian. This outer line of defence, a less solid work than that
which ran from Newcastle to Carlisle, was composed of a trench, and an
earthern wall of sods, drawn from the mouth of the Forth to the mouth
of the Clyde, at the narrowest part of the island. It is generally
called the Wall of Antoninus, from the name of the emperor who was
reigning when it was erected.
[Sidenote: =Campaign of Severus in Caledonia.=]
Only once more did the Romans make any endeavour to complete the
subjection of Britain by adding the Gaelic tribes of the Scottish
Highlands to the list of their tributaries. In 208-9-10 the warlike
emperor Severus led the legions north of the Wall of Antoninus, and
set to work to tame the Caledonians by felling their forests, building
roads across their hills, and erecting forts among them. He overran
the land beyond the Firth of Forth, and might perchance have ended
by conquering the whole island, but he died of disease at York early
in 211. His successors drew back, abandoned his conquests, and never
attempted again to subjugate the Caledonians.
[Sidenote: =Roman civilization in Britain.=]
Altogether the Romans abode in Britain for three hundred and sixty
years (A.D. 43 to A.D. 410). Their occupation of the land was mainly
a military one, and they never succeeded in teaching the mass of the
natives to abandon their Celtic tongue, or to take up Roman customs and
habits. The towns indeed were Romanized, and great military centres
like Eboracum and Deva, or commercial centres like London, were filled
with a Latin-speaking population, and boasted of fine temples, baths,
and public buildings. But the villagers of the open country, and the
Celtic landholders who dwelt among them, were very little influenced
by the civilization of the town-dwellers, and lived on by themselves
much in the way of their ancestors, worshipping the same Celtic gods,
using the same rude tools and vessels, and dwelling in the same low
clay huts, though the townsmen were accustomed to build stone houses
after the Roman fashion, to employ all manner of foreign luxuries, and
to translate into Minerva, or Apollo, or Mars, the names of their old
Celtic deities Sul, or Mabon, or Belucatadrus.
[Illustration: ROMAN BRITAIN
=SHOWING THE
CHIEF ROMAN ROADS.=]
The Romans greatly changed the face of Britain by their great
engineering works. They drew broad roads from place to place, seldom
turning aside to avoid forest or river. Their solidly-built causeways
were carried across the marshy tracts, and pierced through the midst
of the densest woods. Where the road went, clearings on each side were
made, and population sprang up in what had hitherto been trackless
wilderness. The Romans explored the remotest corners of Wales and
Cornwall in their search after mineral wealth; they worked many tin,
lead, and copper mines in the island, and exported the ores to Gaul
and Italy. They developed the fisheries of Britain, especially the
oyster fishery; not only did they prize British pearls, but the oysters
themselves were exported as a special luxury to the distant capital of
the world. They improved the farming of the open country so much that
in years of scarcity the corn of Britain fed northern Gaul. In the
more pleasant corners of the land Roman officials or wealthy merchants
built themselves fine villas, with floors of mosaic, and elaborate
heating-apparatus to guard them against the cold of the northern
winter. Hundreds of such abodes are to be found: they clustered
especially thick along the south coast and in the vale of Gloucester.
Gauls, Italians, Greeks, and Orientals came to share in the trade
of Britain, and at the same time many of its natives must have
crossed to the continent, notably those who were sent to serve in the
auxiliary cohorts of Britons, which formed part of the Roman army,
and were quartered on the Rhine and Danube. But in spite of all this
intercourse, the Celts did not become Romanized like the Gauls or
Spaniards; the survival of their native tongue to this day sufficiently
proves it. In all the other provinces of the West, Latin completely
extinguished the old native languages. In the towns, however, the
Britons often took Roman names, and men of note in the countryside did
the same. Many of the commonest Welsh names of to-day are corrupt forms
of Latin names: Owen, for example, is a degradation from Eugenius, and
Rhys from Ambrosius, though they have lost so entirely the shape of
their ancient originals.
[Sidenote: =Britain harassed by barbarians.=]
Britain shared with the other provinces in the disasters which fell
upon the empire in the third century, in the days of the weak usurpers
who held the imperial throne after the extinction of the family of
Severus. Three races are recorded as having troubled the land: the
first was the ancient enemy, the Caledonians from beyond the wall,
whom now the Chronicles generally style _Picts_, "the painted men,"
because they alone of the inhabitants of Britain still retained the
barbarous habit of tattooing themselves. The second foe was the race
of the Saxons, the German tribes who dwelt by the mouths of the Elbe
and Weser. They were great marauders by sea, and so vexed the east of
Britain by their descents that the emperors created an officer called
"The Count of the Saxon Shore,"[2] whose duty was to guard the coast
from the Wash as far as Beachy Head by a chain of castles on the
water's edge, and a flotilla of war-galleys. The third enemy was the
Scottish race, a tribe who then occupied northern Ireland, and had not
yet moved across to the land which now bears their name. They infested
the shores of the province which lay between the Clyde and the Severn.
[Sidenote: =Carausius.=]
Attacked at once by Pict and Scot and Saxon, the province declined in
prosperity, and gained little help from the continent where emperors
were being made and remade at the rate of about one every three years.
Britain seems to have first recovered herself in the time of Carausius,
a "Count of the Saxon Shore," who proclaimed himself emperor, and
reigned as an independent sovereign on our side of the Channel (287).
His fleet drove off the Saxons, and his armies held back the Pict and
Scot as long as he lived. But after a reign of seven years the rebel
emperor was murdered, and three years later the province was reunited
to the empire.
[Sidenote: =Constantius and Constantine.=]
For the next twenty years Britain was under the rule of the emperors
Constantius and Constantine, both of whom dwelt much in the island, and
paid attention to its needs. Constantius died at York, and his son,
Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, went forth from
Britain to conquer all the Roman world. But with the extinction of
this great man's family in 362, evil days began once more. Barbarians
were thronging round every frontier of the empire, greedy for the
plunder of its great cities, while within were weak rulers, vexed
by constant military rebellions. The Pict, the Scot, and the Saxon
returned to Britain in greater force than before, and pushed their
raids into the very heart of the province. Meanwhile, the soldiery who
should have defended the island were constantly being drawn away by
ambitious generals, who wished to use them in attempts to seize Italy,
and win the imperial diadem. The ruin of Britain must be attributed to
this cause more than to any other: twice the whole of its garrison was
taken across the Channel by the rebellious governors, who had staked
their all on the cast for empire. It was after the second of these
rebels had failed, in 410, that the feeble Honorius, the legitimate
emperor of the West, refused to send back any troops to guard the
unprotected island, and bade the dismayed provincials do their best to
defend themselves, because he was unable to give them any assistance.
[Sidenote: =Britain deserted by the Romans.=]
Britain therefore ceased to belong to the Roman empire, not because it
wished to throw off the yoke, but because its masters declared that
they could no longer protect it. Its inhabitants were by no means
anxious to shift for themselves, and more than once they sent pathetic
appeals to Rome to ask for aid against the savage Picts and Saxons.
One of these appeals was written more than thirty years after Honorius
abandoned the province. It was called "The Groans of the Britons," and
ran thus: "The barbarians drive us into the sea, the sea drives us back
on to the barbarians. Our only choice is whether we shall die by the
sword or drown: for we have none to save us" (446).
In spite of these doleful complaints, Britain made a better fight
against her invaders than did any other of the provinces which
the Romans were constrained to abandon in the fifth century. But,
unfortunately for themselves, the Britons were inspired by the usual
Celtic spirit of disunion, and fell asunder into many states the moment
that the hand of the master was removed. Sometimes they combined under
a single leader, when the stress of invasion was unusually severe, but
such leagues were precarious and temporary. The list of their princes
shows that some of them were Romanized Britons, others pure Celts. By
the side of names like Ambrosius, Constantine, Aurelius, Gerontius,
Paternus, we have others like Vortigern, Cunedda, Maelgwn, and Kynan.
Arthur, the legendary chief under whom the Britons are said to have
turned back the Saxon invaders for a time, was--if he ever existed--the
bearer of a Roman name, a corruption of Artorius. But Arthur's name and
exploits are only found in romantic tales; the few historians of the
time have no mention of him.
[Sidenote: =Christianity in Britain.=]
Celtic Britain, when the Romans abandoned it, had become a Christian
country. Of the details of conversion of the land, we have only a few
stories of doubtful authenticity; but we know that British bishops
existed, and attended synods and councils on the continent, and that
there were many churches scattered over the face of the land. The
Britons were even beginning to send missionaries across the sea in
the fifth century. St. Patrick, the apostle of the Irish Gael, was a
native of the northern part of Roman Britain, who had been stolen as
a slave by Scottish pirates, and returned after his release to preach
the gospel to them, somewhere about the year 440. His name (Patricius)
clearly shows that he was a Romanized Briton. A less happy product of
the island was the heretical preacher Pelagius, whose doctrines spread
far over all Western Europe, and roused the anger of the great African
saint, Augustine of Hippo.
Here we must leave Celtic Britain, as the darkness of the fifth century
closes over it. For a hundred and fifty years our knowledge of its
history is most vague and fragmentary, and when next we see the island
clearly, the larger half of it has passed into the hands of a new
people, and is called England, and no longer Britain.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] London, St. Albans, Colchester.
[2] Comes Littoris Saxonici.