two joint-emperors, "Augusti," each with a "Cæsar" as coadjutor, swayed the four prefectures of the Empire, Diocletian himself taking "the East"; his "Cæsar," Galerius, Illyricum; Maximian, Italy; and his Cæsar, Constantius, "the Gauls." As each Augustus retired, his Cæsar was to take his place and appoint a fresh coadjutor in his own. The plan was ingenious, but, unlike most of Diocletian's ideas, proved unequal to the stress of practical politics, strained as these were by the last mortal struggle between heathenism and Christianity.

§ 21. That final persecution, which has branded beyond his deserts the name of Diocletian, gave to Britain the martyr St. Alban; but Constantius himself was a suspected, and his wife Helena an avowed and ardent Christian, so that, when their son Constantine of York made his successful bid for the Empire, it was under the banner of Christ that he led the British army to victory at the Milvian Bridge, A.D. 312. The device on that banner, the well-known Labarum-consisting of the initial letters of the word Christ in Greek, between Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the whole forming the word APX, "I reign "-is seen on coins of this date found in Cambridgeshire, and marks the era at which our country became an avowedly Christian land. The Faith had, indeed, maintained a foothold on our shores since its early preaching in the Apostolic age, if not by St. Paul himself; but now for the first time it received a regular ecclesiastical organization under the three archbishops of London, York, and Caerleon, Cambridgeshire being within the jurisdiction of the first-named. What were the sites and extent of the suffragan sees is matter of conjecture; but rural churches around Cambridge can scarcely have been less numerous than now, during the century of peace and prosperity which succeeded Constantine's departure from the island. Coins of the usurpers Magnentius and Decentius found in the district

remind us of the only political convulsion which for a moment disturbed that peace, in their rebellion (350 A.D.) against the house of Constantine, and of the cruelties attending its suppression by Constantius II.1

§ 22. This rebellion, though but momentary in its immediate consequences, had most important results in hastening the break-up of the Roman Empire throughout the West. The legions never recovered the awful slaughter by which Magnentius was checked at Mursa, on the Drave, when 24,000 of his adherents fell, and of the victorious army of Constantius a yet larger number.2 From this time forward the Western army corps were grievously depleted, and those of Britain, in particular, sent their best levies with the British pretender Maximus3 against Gratian-(Cambridgeshire furnishes coins of both. these rivals)-never to return. This was in the year 383. Two decades later, the fatal year 406 saw the Rhine frontier absolutely denuded of its troops by Stilicho, for the life and death effort which crushed the barbarian hordes of Radagaisus on the hills of Florence, and saved Italy and Rome-for the moment. Then across the undefended stream poured a great flood of Vandals and other German invaders, who overflowed the peaceful and fertile provinces of Gaul, never again to be expelled.

§ 23. Of the troops in Britain a smaller proportion was withdrawn by Stilicho, and what was left of the British army now made one last effort to save the West for Rome. A local pronunciamento declared the despicable Honorius to be unworthy of the purple, and once more proclaimed a British Constantine Augustus. Though only a private soldier of low birth, this pretender showed an energy worthy of his great namesake. Within a year, not only Britain, but Gaul and Spain also, acknowledged his sway; and Honorius himself was fain to negotiate 1 Zozimus, ii. 2 Ibid., xiii. 3 lbid., vi.; Orosius, ii. 34. 4 Ibid., vi.; Orosius, vii. 40.

with him a division of the Empire, and to recognise him as a legitimate Augustus. For four years he thus held his own, till treachery brought about his overthrow and impaled his head above the gate of Carthagena. And for long centuries the fame of his valour alike against the heathen barbarians and the unworthy Emperor, echoed down the lays of Cymric harpers, till it found a place amongst the deeds of Arthur; amid whose champions we may even read the name of this Constantine's chief British General, Gerontius or Geraint.

24. But his action was fatal to Roman Britain. What Stilicho had done for Gaul, Constantine did for our island. Of the three "British" legions, one, the Twentieth, had been withdrawn by the former, and every available soldier between the four seas would seem to have followed the fortunes of the latter.1 The same consequences ensued as in Gaul. The unhappy civilians, almost unarmed and wholly untrained to war, were at the mercy of barbarian invaders, and barbarians far more savage than those beyond the Channel. The naked Picts of Caledonia, in their blue war-paint, burst over the Roman wall; the wild Scots crossed from Ireland in their wicker boats, with their war-cry of "Hoity Toity"; and no Count of the Saxon Shore remained to repel the pirate raiders of the North Sea. Sometimes as allies, oftener as rivals, these terrible foes swept the land from end to end, Cambridgeshire coming in for its full share of their ravages. Once and again, if Bede is to be trusted,2 did the Britons appeal for aid to Rome, but in vain. Rome itself was now in its death-agony, and could do nothing for such distant dependencies. Their last piteous missive, "The Groans of the Britons," was to "Aetius, thrice Consul," in the thickest of his mortal struggle with Attila

1 Procopius, "De Bello Vandalico," i. 2.
2 "Ecclesiastical History," chaps. xii., xiii.

(A.D. 423). "The barbarians," they sigh, "drive us to the sea; the sea drives us back to the barbarians." Finally, in despair, they proposed to the fiercest1 and most formidable of the invaders a permanent settlement within their borders-a settlement which has changed Britain into England.

1 The special ferocity of the Saxons is enlarged on by Sidonius Apollinaris (viii. 6).

§ 1-4. Origin of Saxon name-English march through Cambridgeshire-Picts defeated at Stamford-Romano-British civilization stamped out.

$5-10. Existing villages founded-Common fields-Eorl and churlMarks-Anglo-Saxon cemeteries-Ornaments-Weapons-Currency-Spindle-whorls.

§ 11-13. Fate of Britons-The Fens still British-Girvii-British names surviving-Basket-work.

§ 14-17. Southern Cambridgeshire-Mercia and East Anglia-Local dialect-Bretwaldas-Conversion of East Anglia-Bishop Felix. § 18-32. Last struggle of heathenism-Penda-King Anna and his family-St. Etheldred-Foundation of Ely and Thorney-St. Wilfrid-Burial of St. Etheldred-Her rule of the Isle-" Families" and "hides"-Theodore of Tarsus-Parishes formedThe cross of Ovinus-The Heptarchy.

§ 1.

N the year 1890 there was found in South Cambridgeshire a beautifully-preserved specimen of the weapon which has given its special name to the next period of our history-the seaxe, or short sword of the North Sea rovers. Etymologically the word is connected with the Latin seco and the English hack; while the weapon itself was a narrow blade of steel, single-edged, and with the same murderous-looking, peculiarly-shaped point found to this day in Scandinavian clasp-knives, which, moreover, are still known by almost the identical