BRITAIN INDEPENDENT.

A.D. 418. "THIS year the Romans collected all the treasures that were in Britain, and some they hid in the earth, so that no one has since been able to find them; and some they carried with them into Gaul*."

With this passage from the Saxon Chronicle the authentic history of Britain ceases for a period of nearly sixty years. In the interval are usually placed certain events mentioned in the writings of Gildas and Nennius, but nothing is to be drawn from their statements that *can be reduced to chronological accuracy; for the first gives no dates, and the few found in the latter are contradictory. Though some, perhaps several, of the events may be true, it is impossible to assign dates to the reputed marriage of Guorthigirn (Vortigern) to the daughter of Hengist; the murder of the British nobles; the numerous battles said to have been fought with various success by Guorthemir (Vortimer) and Ambrosius against the invaders; the death of Horsa, or the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom.

By comparing, however, these statements with the few scattered notices to be found in Zosimus and other writers of the period, we learn that, the Roman power

Passages thus marked, during the Saxon Era, unless some other work is cited, are taken from the English version of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, published in the Monumenta; and although I have occasionally thought it necessary, especially in the poetical portions, slightly to condense, I have the authority of the surviving Editor of that invaluable work for saying that the sense of the original has been carefully preserved.

being finally withdrawn, a state of society prevailed in the island, much the same as had existed at the coming of Cæsar, and which has since found its counterpart in the Italian republics of the middle ages. The British cities formed themselves into a varying number of independent states, usually at war among themselves, but occasionally united by some common danger into a confederacy, with an elective chieftain whose power lasted no longer than the emergency. Such a ruler probably was Vortigern, who,-pressed at once by the northern tribes and the sea rovers, and by rivals for power, of whom one named Ambrosius, of Roman extraction, was the most formidable,-bears the reproach of calling in the aid of the Saxons against both his foreign and domestic foes. Recent researches have rendered it probable that the well-known names of Hengist and Horsa, ascribed to their leaders, are not proper names, but rather titles of honour, (signifying war-horse and mare,) bestowed on many daring leaders of bands, and that the first employment of mercenaries, who soon leagued with the enemy, and at length became numerous enough to rule the country they were hired to guard, should be placed at least as early as the year 429, or twenty years before the era usually assigned.

It seems hopeless to attempt to identify the sites · of the numerous battles that ensued, much less to assign satisfactory dates to them; and the whole sum of our knowledge on the matter may be said to be comprised in the statement of the Saxon Chronicle under the year 473, "Hengest and Esc fought against the Welsh

b In the original Hengst, or Hengest and Hors.

(Walas or Wealas), and took spoils innumerable; and the Welsh fled from the Angles (Englan) like fire.”

Several applications for aid are stated by Nennius to have been made to the Romans, particularly one addressed to "Etius thrice consul," which is couched in most abject terms, and is known in history by the title of the "groans of the Britons;" some succour seems occasionally to have been afforded, but it had no permanent effect on the contest.

In addition to the miseries of war the Britons suffered at this time from religious dissensions, until the spread of the Pelagian heresy induced them to apply to the bishops of Gaul for spiritual aid. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, twice visited the island for the purpose (probably in 428 and 446), and on one occasion he also gave them military assistance, by leading a body of newly baptized Britons against their enemies, and gaining a victory known as the "Hallelujah," from the cry with which his converts fell upon their heathen foes.

Meantime the mighty empire of Rome, of which Britain had so long formed a part, was falling into utter ruin. Rome was abandoned by the emperors, who, surrounded by barbarian mercenaries, sought ignoble safety amid the marshes of Ravenna, where they were in reality little more than puppets in the hands of their prime ministers. Iberia was occupied by the Vandals as early as 410; Gaul was about the same time partitioned among the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Germans, and the Roman settlers, and ere long became a Frankish kingdom. Germany was gradually occupied by Slavonic tribes, who drove the Goths and other

nations into Italy, where they took firm root, and it is a Gothic historian (Jornandes) who relates how, after the death of Valentinian III., Rome was in the course of twenty years occupied by eight "tyrants" in succession; until the last of them, contemptuously styled Augustulus, was in 476 deposed by Odoacer, the captain of the Herulian guard, who, despising the empty name of emperor, governed the country for a while with wisdom and success under the modest title of Patrician, until he in his turn was defeated and soon after treacherously slain by Theodoric, the founder of the Gothic dynasty in Italy.

FROM THE FIFTH TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.

HE original country of the Saxons cannot be regarded as fully ascertained. A tale accepted as authentic by Witikind of Corbie, in the tenth century, represents them as arriving in ships, and settling themselves by force among the Thuringians, in the time of the emperor Vespasian, and from the idolatrous estimation in which they are known to have held the war-horse, it has been conjectured that they probably came from the country eastward of the Baltic, that form of idolatry prevailing in those regions even to comparatively recent times. The first direct mention of them, however, is that by Ptolemy, who, before the close of the second century, speaks of the tribes on the shore and the islands at the mouth of the Elbe, as Saxons, and pirates.

Of the form of government prevailing at that time among them, we know little more than that, as with other barbarous nations, it was based on their idolatry. Their chiefs claimed descent from Woden, the god of