Anglo Saxon Britain English Settle Britain

8/8/2019 Anglo Saxon Britain English Settle Britain

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ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

CHAPTER III.THE ENGLISH SETTLE IN BRITAIN.

PROXIMITY to the sea turns robbers into corsairs.When predatory tribes reach the seaboard they alwaystake to piracy, provided they have attained the shipbuilding level of culture. In the ancient LEgean, inthe Malay Archipelago, in the China seas, we see thesame process always taking place. Probably fromthe first period of their severance from the mainAryan stock in Central Asia, the Low German ~ ' a c e and their ancestors had been a predatory and conquering people, for ever engaged in raids and smouldering warfare with their neighbours. When theyreached the Baltic and the islands of the Frisiancoast, they grew naturally into a nation of pirates.Even during the bronze age, we find sculptured stoneswith representations of long row-boats, manned byseveral oarsmen, and in one or two cases actuallybearing a rude sail. Their prows and sterns standhigh out of the water, and are adorned with intricatecarvings. They seem like the predecessors of thelong ships-snakesand sea-dragons-which afterwardsbore the northern corsairs into every river of Europe.Such boats, adapted for long sea-voyages, showa considerable intercourse, piratical or commercial

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20 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

between the Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian North andother distant countries. Certainly, from the earliestdays of Roman rule on the German Ocean to thethirteenth century, the Low Dutch and Scandinaviantribes carried on an almost unbroken course of expeditions by sea, beginning in every case with meredescents upon the coast for the purposes of plunderbut ending, as a rule, with regular colonisation orpolitical supremacy. In this manner the people ofthe Baltic and the North Sea ravaged or settled inevery country on the sea-shore, from Orkney, Shetland,and the Faroes, to Normandy, Apulia, and Greece;from Boulogne and Kent, to Iceland, Greenland, and,perhaps, America. The colonisation of South-EasternBritain was but the first chapter in this long historyof predatory excursions on the part of the LowGerman peoples.The piratical ships of the early English were row-

boats of very simple construction. We actuallypossess one undoubted specimen at the presentday, whose very date is fixed for us by the circumstances of its discovery. I t was dug up, some yearssince, from a peat-bog in Sleswick, the old Engla_ndof our forefathers, along with iron arms and implements, and in association with Roman coins rangingin date from A.D. 67 to A.D. 217. I t may t h e r e f o r ' ~ be pretty confidently assigned to the first half ofthe third century. In this interesting relic, then, wehave one of the identical boats in which the descentsupon the British coast were first made. The craft isrudely built of oaken boards, and is seventy feet long


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THE ENGLISH SETTLE IN BRITAIN . 2Jby nine broad. The stem and stern are alike illshape, and the boat is fitted for being beached uponthe foreshore. A sculptured stone at Hiiggeby, inUplande, roughly represents for us such a ship underway, probably of about the same date. I t is rowedwith twelve pairs of oars, and has no sails j and itcontains no other persons but the rowers and a cox-swain, who acted doubtless as leader of the expedition.Such a boat might convey about 120 fighting men.There are some grounds for believing that, evenbefore the establishment of the Roman power inBritain, Teutonic pirates from the northern marsh-lands were already in the habit of plundering theCeltic inhabitants of the country between the Washand the mouth of the Thames; and it is possiblethat an English colony may, even then, have estab-lished itself in the modern Lincolnshire. But, bethis as it may, we know at least that during theperiod of the Roman occupation, Low German ad-venturers were constantly engaged in descending uponthe exposed coasts of the English Channel and theNorth Sea. The Low German tribe nearest to theRoman provinces was that of the Saxons, and accord-ingly these Teutonic pirates, of whatever race, wereknown as Saxons by the provincials, and all English-men are still so called bithe modern Celts, in Wales,Scotland, and Ireland.The outlying Roman provinces were close at hand,easy to reach, rich, illdefended, ann a tempting preyfor the barbaric tribesmen of the north. Setting outin their light open skiffs from the islands at the


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22 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.mouth the Elbe, or off the shore afterwards submerged in what is now the Zuyder Zee, the Englishor Saxon pirates crossed the sea with the prevalentnorth-east wind, and landed all along the provincialcoasts of Gaul and Britain. As the empire decayedunder the assaults of the Goths, their ravages turnedintG regular settlements. One great body pillaged,age after age, the neighbourhood of Bayeux, where,before the middle of the fifth century, it establishedit flourishing colony, and where the towns and villagesall still bear names of Saxon origin. Another hordefirst plundered and then took up its abode nearBoulogne, where local names of the English patronymic type also abound to the present day. InBritain itself, at a date not later than the end of thefourth century, we find (in the" Notitia Imperii ") anofficer who bears the title of Count of the SaxonShore, and whose jurisdiction extended from Lincolnshire to Southampton Water. The title probablyindicates that piratical incursions had already set inon Britain, and the duty of the count was most likelythat of repelling the English invaders.As soon as the Romans found themselves C0111-pelled to withdraw their garrison from Britain, leavingthe provinces to defend themselves as best theymight, the temptation to the English pirates becamea thousand times stronger than before. Though the so-called history of the conquest, handed down to usby Ba!da and the" English Chronicle,"l is now con-

For an account of these two main authorities see furtheron, Breda in chapter xi., and the" Chronicie" in chapter xviii.


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THE ENGLISH SETTLE IN BRITAIN. 23

sidered by many enquirers to be mythical in almostevery particular, the facts themselves speak out forwith unhesitating certainty. We know that about themiddle of the fifth century, shortly after the withdrawal of the regular Roman troops, several bodies ofheathen Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the three tribesof Jutes, English, and Saxons, settled en masse onthe south-eastern shores of Britain, from the Frith ofForth to the Isle of Wight. . The age of mereplundering descents was decisively over, and the ageof settlement and colonisation had set in. Theseheathen Anglo-Saxons drove away, exterminated, orenslaved the Romanised and Christianised Celts,broke down every vestige of Roman civilisation,destroyed the churches, burnt the villas, laid wastemany of the towns, and re-introduced a long periodof pagan barbarism. For a while Britain remainsenveloped in an age of complete uncertainty, andheathen myths intervene between the Christian historical period of the Romans and the Christianhistorical period initiated by the conversion of Kent.Of South-Eastern Britain under the pagan AngloSaxons we know practically nothing, save by inference and analogy, or by the scanty evidence ofarcha::ology.

According to tradition the Jutes came first. In449, says the Celtic legend (the date is quite untrustworthy), they landed in Kent, where they firstsettled in Ruim, which we English call Thanet-thenreally an island, and gradually spread themselvesover the mainland, capturing the great Roman fortress


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of Rochester and coast land as far as London.Though the d e t a i l ~ of this story are full of mythicalabsurdities, the analogy of the later Danish coloniesgives it an air of great probability, as the Danesalways settled first in isla.nds or peninsulas, andthence proceeded to overrun, and finally to annex,the adjacent district. A second Jutish horde established itself in the Isle of Wight and on the oppositeshore of Hampshire. But the whole share borne bythe Jutes in the settlement of Britain seems to havebeen but small.The Saxons carne second in time, if we may believethe legends. In 477, LElle, with his three sons, issaid to have landed on the south coast, where he

founded the colony of the South Saxons, or Sussex.In 495, Cerdic and Cynric led another kindred hordeto the south-western shore, and made the first settlement of the West Saxons, or Wessex. Of the beginnings of the East Saxon community in Essex, and ofthe Middle Saxons in Middlesex, we know little, evenby tradition. The Saxons undoubtedly came over inlarge numbers; bUl a considerable body of theirfellow-tribesmen still remained upon the Continent,where they were still independent and unconvertedup to the time of Karl the Great.The English, on the other hand, apparently mi-

grated in a body. There is no trace of any Englishmen in Denmark or Germany after the exodus toBritain. Their language, of which a dialect stillsurvives in Friesland, has utterly died out in Sleswick.The English took for their share of Britain the


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THE ENGLISH SETTLE IN BRITAIN. 25

nearest east coast. We have little record of theirarrival, even in the legendary story; we merely learnthat in 547, Ida "succeeded to the kingdom" ofthe Northumbrians, whence we may possibly conclude that the colony was already established. TheEnglish settlement extended from the Forth toEssex, and was subdivided into Bernicia, Deira, andEast Anglia.

Wherever the Anglo-Saxons Game, their first workwas to stamp out with fire ami sword every trace of theRoman civilisation. Modern investigations amongstpagan Anglo-Saxon barrows in Britain show the LowGerman race as pure barbarians, great at destruction,but incapable of constructive work. Professor Rolleston, who has opened several of these early heathentombs of our Teutonic ancestors, finds in them everywhere abundant evidence of "their great aptness atdestroying, and their great slowness in elaborating,material civilisation." Until the Anglo-Saxon receivedfrom the Continent the Christian religion and theRoman culture, he was a mere average Aryan barbarian, with a strong taste for war and plunder, butwith small love for any of the arts of peace. Whereverelse, in Gaul, Spain, or Italy, the Teutonic barbarianscame in contact with the Roman civilisation, theyreceived the religion of Christ, and the arts of theconquered people, during or before their conquest ofthe country. But in Britain the Teutonic invadersremained pagans long after their settlement in theisland; and they utterly destroyed, in the south-easterntract, almost every relic of the Roman rule and of


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the Christian faith. Hence we have here the curio'.lsfact that, during the fifth and sixth centuries, a bdt ofintrusive and aggressive heathendom intervenes between the Christians of the Continent and theChristian Welsh and Irish of western Britain_ TheChurch of the Celtic Welsh was cut off for more thana hundred years from the Churches of the Romanworld by a hostile and impassable barrier of heathenEnglish, Jutes, and Saxons. Their separation produced many momentous -effects on the after hist')fYboth of the Welsh themselves 8nd of their Englishcon

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Anglo Saxon Britain English Settle Britain