THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH.
In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain
would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather
than of the more distant Saxons. But the wild tribes of the North came
to plunder only, while the pirates from the Elbe and Eider had larger
designs.
The conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons differed in every way
from that of the other Western provinces of the Roman empire by the
kindred tribes of the Goths, the Franks, and the Lombards. The Goths
and the Franks had dwelt for two hundred years on the borders of the
empire; they had traded with its merchants, served as mercenaries in
its armies, and learnt to appreciate its luxuries. Many of them had
accepted Christianity long before their conquest of the provinces which
they turned into Teutonic kingdoms. But the Saxons were plunged in the
blackest heathendom and barbarism, dwelling as they did by the Elbe
and Eider, far at the back of the tribes that had any touch with or
knowledge of the empire and its civilization. The Goth and the Frank
came to enslave, and to enjoy; the Angle and the Saxon were bent purely
on a work of destruction. Hence it came that, instead of contenting
themselves with overthrowing the provincial government, and enthralling
the inhabitants of the land, they swept away everything before them,
and replaced the old civilization of Britain by a perfectly new social
organization of their own.
[Sidenote: =Hengist and Horsa, 449.--Kingdom of Kent.=]
If the Welsh legends speak truly, the first settlement of the Saxons
on British soil was caused by the unwisdom of the native kings. We
are told that Vortigern, the monarch who ruled Kent and south-eastern
Britain, was so harried by the Picts and Scots that he sent in despair
to hire some German chiefs to fight his battles for him. The story
may be true, for in the decaying days of the Roman empire the Cæsars
themselves had often hired one barbarian to fight another, and the
British king may well have followed their example. The legend then
proceeds to tell how Vortigern's invitation was accepted by Hengist and
Horsa, two chiefs of Jutish blood, who came with their war-bands to
the aid of the Britons, and drove away the Picts and Scots. But when
the king of Kent wished to pay them their due and get them out of the
country, Hengist and Horsa refused to depart: they seized and fortified
the Isle of Thanet, which was then separated from the mainland by
a broad marshy channel, and defied the Britons to drive them away
(449). Then began a long war between the two sea-kings and their late
employer, which, after many vicissitudes, ended in the conquest of
the whole of Kent by Hengist. Horsa had been slain in the battle of
Aylesford, which gave the invaders full possession of the land between
the forest of the Weald and the estuary of the Thames. Hengist was
saluted as king by his victorious followers, and was the ancestor of a
long line of Kentish monarchs.
We cannot be sure that the details of the story of the conquest of Kent
are correct, but they are not unlikely, and it is quite probable that
this kingdom was the first state which the Germans built up on British
ground.
[Sidenote: =Aella, 477.--Kingdom of the South Saxons.=]
Hengist and Horsa's warriors were not Saxons, but members of the tribe
of the Jutes, who dwelt north of the Saxons in the Danish peninsula,
where a land of moors and lakes still bears the name of Jutland. But
the next band of invaders who seized on part of Britain were of Saxon
blood. An "alderman" or chief called Aella brought his war-band to the
southern shore of Britain in 477, and landed near the great fortress of
Anderida (Pevensey), one of the strongholds that had, in old days, been
under the care of the Roman "count of the Saxon shore." The followers
of Aella sacked this town, and slew off every living thing that was
therein. They went on to conquer the narrow slip of land between the
sea and the forest of the Weald, as far as Chichester and Selsea, and
made the chalky downs their own. Settling down thereon, they called
themselves the South Saxons, and the district got from them the name
of Sussex (Suth Seaxe). There Aella reigned as king, and many of his
obscure descendants after him.
[Sidenote: =Cerdic, 495.--Kingdom of the West Saxons.=]
Twenty years later, another band of Saxon adventurers, led by the
alderman Cerdic, landed on Southampton Water, west of the realm
of Aella (495), and, after a hard fight with the Britons, won the
valleys of the Itchen and the Test with the old Roman town of Venta
(Winchester). Many years after his first landing, Cerdic took the title
of king, like his neighbours of Kent and Sussex, and his realm became
known as the land of the West Saxons (Wessex). Gradually pushing onward
along the ridges of the downs, successive generations of the kings of
Wessex drove the Britons out of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire till the
line of conquest stopped at the forest-belt which lay east of Bath.
Here the advance stood still for a time, for the British kings of the
Damnonians, the tribes of Devon and Cornwall, made a most obstinate
defence. So gallant was it that the Celts of a later generation
believed that the legendary hero of their race, the great King Arthur,
had headed the hosts of Damnonia in person, and placed his city of
Camelot and his grave at Avilion within the compass of the western
realm.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of the East Saxons.=]
While Cerdic was winning the downs of Hampshire for himself, another
band of Saxon warriors had landed on the northern shore of the Thames,
and subdued the low-lying country between the old Roman towns of
Camulodunum and Londinium, from the Colne as far as the Stour. This
troop of adventurers took the name of the East Saxons, and were the
last of their race to gain a footing on the British shores.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of East Anglia, 520.=]
North of Essex it was no longer the Saxons who took up the task of
conquest, but a kindred tribe, the Angles or English, who dwelt
originally between the Saxons and the Jutes, in the district which is
now called Schleswig. They were closely allied in blood and language
to the earlier invaders of Britain, and very probably their chiefs
may have aided in the earlier raids. About the year 520 the Angles
descended in force on the eastern shore of Britain, and two of their
war-bands established themselves in the land where the Celtic tribe of
the Iceni had dwelt. These two bands called themselves the North Folk
and South Folk, and from them the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk get
their names. The kingdom formed by their union was known as that of the
East Angles.
[Sidenote: =The Northumbrian kingdoms, 547-550.=]
Still further to the north new Anglian bands seized on the lands north
of the Humber, whence they obtained the name of Northumbrians. They
built up two kingdoms in the old region of the Brigantes. One, from
Forth to Tees, was called Bernicia, from Bryneich, the old Celtic name
of the district. It comprised only a strip along the shore, reaching
no further inland than the forest of Selkirk and the head-waters of
the Tyne; its central stronghold was the sea-girt rock of Bamborough.
The second Northumbrian kingdom was called Deira, a name derived, like
that of Bernicia, from the former Celtic appellation of the land. Deira
comprised the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, and centred round
the old Roman city of Eboracum, whose name the Angles corrupted into
Eofervic. The origin of Bernicia and Deira is ascribed to the years
547-550, so that northern Britain was not subdued by the invaders till
a century after Kent had fallen into their hands.
[Sidenote: =The kingdom of Mercia.=]
Last of the English realms was established the great midland state of
Mercia--the "March" or borderland. It was formed by the combination
of three or four Anglian war-bands, who must have cut their way into
the heart of Britain up the line of the Trent. Among these bodies of
adventurers were the Lindiswaras--the troop who had won the old Roman
city of Lindum, or Lincoln,--the Mid-Angles of Leicester, and the
Mercians strictly so-called, who held the foremost line of advance
against the Celts in the modern counties of Derby and Stafford. The
Britons still maintained themselves at Deva and Uriconium (Chester and
Wroxeter), two ancient Roman strongholds, and the Mercians had not yet
reached the Severn at any point.
[Sidenote: =The Britons in the west.=]
About 570, therefore, after a hundred and twenty years of hard
fighting, the Angles and Saxons had conquered about one-half of
Britain, but they were stopped by a line of hills and forests running
down the centre of the island, and did not yet touch the western sea at
any point. Behind this barrier dwelt the unsubdued Britons, who were
styled by the English the "Welsh," or "foreigners," though they called
themselves the Kymry, or "comrades." They were, now as always, divided
into several kingdoms whose chiefs were perpetually at war, and failed
most lamentably to support each other against the English invader. The
most important of these kingdoms were Cumbria in the north, between the
Clyde and Ribble, Gwynedd in North Wales, and Damnonia in Devon and
Cornwall. Now and again prominent chiefs from one or other of these
three realms succeeded in forcing their neighbours to combine against
the Saxon enemy, and styled themselves lords of all the Britons, but
the title was precarious and illusory. The Celts could never learn
union or wisdom.
[Illustration: LIMIT OF THE
=ENGLISH=
CONQUESTS,
ABOUT A.D. 570.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Deorham, 577.=]
The line of the British defence was at last broken in two points, and
the Saxons and Angles pushed through till they touched the Irish Sea
and the Bristol Channel. The first of the conquerors of Western Britain
was Ceawlin, king of Wessex. After winning the southern midlands by
a victory at Bedford in 571 he pushed along the upper Thames, and
attacked the Welsh of the lower Severn. At a great battle fought at
Deorham, in Gloucestershire, in 577, he slew the kings of Glevum,
Corinium, and Aquae Sulis (Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath). All
their realms fell into his hands, and so the West Saxons won their
way to the Severn and the Bristol Channel, and cut off the Celts of
Damnonia from the Celts of South Wales.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Chester, 613.=]
A generation later, in the year 613, Aethelfrith the Northumbrian, king
of Bernicia and Deira, made a similar advance westward. In a great
battle at Deva (Chester) he defeated the allied princes of Cumbria and
North Wales. This fight was long remembered because of the massacre of
a host of monks who had come to supplicate Heaven for the victory of
the Celts over the pagan English. "If they do not fight against us with
their arms, they do so with their prayers," said the Northumbrian king,
and bade his warriors cut them all down. The city of Deva was sacked,
and remained a mere ring of mouldering Roman walls for three centuries.
The district round it became English, and thus the Cumbrians were
separated from the North Welsh by a belt of hostile territory.
The battles of Chester and Deorham settled the future of Britain; the
Celts became comparatively helpless when they had been cut into three
distinct sections, in Cumbria, Wales, and Damnonia. The future of the
island now lay in the hands of the English, not in that of the ancient
inhabitants of Britain.
[Sidenote: =The invaders and the natives.=]
The states which the invaders had built up were, as might have been
inferred from their origin, small military monarchies. The basis of
each had been the war-band that followed some successful "alderman,"
for the invaders were not composed of whole tribes emigrating _en
masse_, but of the more adventurous members of the race only. The bulk
of the Saxons and Jutes remained behind on the continent in their
ancient homes, and so did many of the Angles. When the successful chief
had conquered a district of Britain and assumed the title of king, he
would portion the land out among his followers, reserving a great share
for his own royal demesne. Each of the king's sworn companions, or
_gesiths_ as the old English called them, became the centre of a small
community of dependents--his children, servants, and slaves. At first
the invaders often slew off the whole Celtic population of a valley,
but ere long they found the convenience of reducing them to slavery and
forcing them to till the land for their new masters. In eastern Britain
and during the first days of the conquest the natives were often wholly
extirpated, but in the central and still more in the western part of
the island they were allowed to survive as serfs, and thus there is
much Celtic blood in England down to this day. But this native element
was never strong enough to prevail over and absorb the conquerors, as
happened to the Goths of Spain and the Franks of Gaul, who finally lost
their language and their national identity among the preponderant mass
of their own dependents.
As the conquest of Britain went on, many families who had not been
in the war-band of the original invader came in to join the first
settlers, and to dwell among them, so that the king had many English
subjects besides his original _gesiths_. Some of the villages in his
dominions would therefore be inhabited by the servile dependents of
one of these early-coming military chiefs, others by the free bands
of kinsmen who had drifted in of their own accord to settle in the
land. When we see an English village with a name like Saxmundham, or
Edmonton, or Wolverton, we may guess that the place was originally the
homestead of a lord named Saxmund, or Eadmund, or Wulfhere, and his
dependents. But when it has a name like Buckingham, or Paddington, or
Gillingham, we know that it was the common settlement of a family, the
Buckings or the Paddings or the Gillings, for the termination _-ing_
in old English invariably implied a body of descendants from common
ancestors.
[Sidenote: =Administration--Aldermen and shire-reeves.=]
The early English states were administered under the king by aldermen,
or military chiefs, to each of whom was entrusted the government of
one of the various regions of the kingdom, and by _reeves_, who were
responsible for the royal property and dues, each in his own district.
The larger kingdoms, such as Wessex, were soon cut up into _shires_,
each with its alderman and shire-reeve (sheriff), and many of these
shires exist down to our own day.
[Sidenote: =The king and the witan.=]
The supreme council of the realm was formed by the king, the aldermen,
and a certain number of the greater _gesiths_ who served about the
king's person. The king and great men discussed subjects of national
moment, while the people sat round and shouted assent or dissent
to their speeches. The king did not take any measure of importance
without the advice of his councillors, who were known as the _Witan_,
or Wise-men. When a king died, or ruled tyrannically, or became
incompetent, it was the Witan who chose a new monarch from among the
members of the royal family, for there was as yet no definite rule of
hereditary succession, and the kingship was elective, though the Witan
never went outside the limits of the royal house in their nominations.
[Sidenote: =The shire-moot and tun-moot.=]
The smaller matters of import in an old English kingdom were settled
at the _shire-moot_, or meeting of all the freemen of a shire. There,
once a month, the aldermen and reeve of the district called up the
freeholders who dwelt in it, and by their aid settled disputes and
lawsuits. Each freeman had his vote, so the shire-court was a much more
democratic body than the Witan, where only great lords and officials
could speak and give their suffrages.
Matters too small for the _shire-moot_ were settled by the meeting of
the villagers in their own petty _tun-moot_, which every freeman would
attend. Here would be decided disputes between neighbours, as to their
fields and cattle. Such cases would be numerous because, in the early
settlements of the English, the ploughed fields and the pasture grounds
of the village were both great unenclosed tracts with no permanent
boundaries. Every man owned his house and yard, but the pasture and the
waste land and woods around belonged to the community, and not to the
individual.
[Sidenote: =Gradual growth of towns.=]
The early English were essentially dwellers in the open country. They
did not at first know how to deal with the old Roman towns, but simply
plundered and burnt them, and allowed them to crumble away. They
thought the deserted ruins were the homes of ghosts and evil spirits,
and were not easily induced to settle near them. Even great towns like
Canterbury and London and Bath seem to have lain waste for a space,
between their destruction by the first invaders and their being again
peopled. But ere long the advantages of the sites, and the abundance
of building material which the old Roman buildings supplied, tempted
the English back to the earlier centres of population. We can trace the
ancient origin of many of our towns by their names: the English added
the word -chester or -caster to the name of the places which were built
on Roman sites--a word derived, of course, from the Latin _castra_. So
Winchester and Rochester and Dorchester and Lancaster are shown to be
old Roman towns rebuilt, but not founded by the new-comers.
[Sidenote: =Religion.=]
In religion the old English were pure polytheists, worshipping the
ancient gods of their German ancestors, Woden, the wise father of
heaven, and Thunder (Thor), the god of storm and strength, and Balder,
the god of youth and spring, and many more. But they were not an
especially religious people; they had few temples and priests, and did
not allow their superstition to influence their life or their politics
to any great extent. We shall see that in a later age most of them
deserted their pagan worship without much regret and after but a short
struggle. It was more a matter of ancestral custom to them than a very
fervent belief. It is noticeable that very few places in England get
their names from the old gods; but we find a few, such as Wednesbury
(Woden's-burh) or Thundersfield, or Balderston, scattered over the face
of the country.