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1

PERMANENCE OF A BRITISH POPULATION.

civilized men and barbarians, between the Romanized population of the cities and the native tribes of the country, between the Loegrians of the east and the Kymry of the west, had been the primary cause of the Saxon invasion and conquest. But independently of this, the Saxons were a stronger race, physically, than their enemies; and with less of irregular impulse, they had greater energy, a firmer tenacity of purpose, and a more steady patience in the execution of their plans. The circumstances of those times favoured the barbarous invader rather than the half-civilized people. For governments were many and weak; standing armies had been replaced by local militias; and patriotism had been almost destroyed by Roman centralization. It is not wonderful, therefore, if the Saxons triumphed. But their general success in the great battles is remarkable; and the desperate courage with which the Britons bore up, at least in Wessex and Northumbria, against repeated defeats, is evidence of the high qualities of the race. They obtained their reward in the liberal terms which were granted them by the conqueror.

For the common belief, that the Keltic population of Britain was exterminated or driven into Wales and Brittany by the Saxons, has absolutely no foundation in history. It probably originated with the Welsh, who confounded the position of their ancestors as premier tribe under Vortigern, with the occupation of the island. The mistake is as if we should suppose that the Silures, under Caractacus, were the whole. British people. Their courage and national spirit have given them a deserved pre-eminence, but it is nothing more than this. We hear of great slaughters by the Saxons on their bloody battle-fields, but no massacres after the fight are recorded, except in the single case of Andredes-Ceaster. We know by the complaints of Welsh poets, that a race of

1 Herbert, Britannia in the time of the Romans.

2 The life of Alfred, ascribed to Asser, says that the Britons of the Isle of Wight were massacred. This is probably an exaggeration of the simple statement in the Saxon chronicle, "Cerdic and Cynric slew many men at Wihtgarasburg."

PROOFS OF THE BRITISH POPULATION.

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Romanized Britons, whom they call Loegrians, took part with the invaders against their Keltic kinsmen; and we cannot suppose that the Saxons would cut the throats of their allies after the war. The object of all the races who broke up the Roman empire was not to settle in a desert, but to live at ease, as an aristocracy of soldiers, drawing rent from a peaceful population of tenants. Moreover, coming in small and narrow skiffs, the conquerors could not bring their families with them, and must in most cases have taken wives from the women of the country. That the Saxon language was not, like the Norman and Frank, exchanged for a Latin dialect, is probably due to the long duration of the struggle. During four generations of men, fresh recruits were perpetually swarming in from the shores of the German Ocean to take part in the subjugation of the island.

These probabilities are confirmed by facts that meet us on every side. The political division of hundreds belonged to the Germans, in the time of the earliest Frank kings,' and probably indicates in England what number of Saxons settled in a conquered district. Now here we find as a rule that the number is always greatest in maritime counties, and smaller as we advance inland and westward. Sixty-six in Kent and seventy-two in Sussex contrast strongly with six in Lancashire, five in Warwickshire, and seven in Leicestershire. Evidently the searovers settled chiefly in the parts which the sea washed, and

1 Causator centenarium cum centenâ requirat, &c.-Decret, Childebert. Conventus fiat in omni centenâ.-Leg. Alam., i., 36; Baluz, vol. i., p. 14, 46. The expression of Tacitus, "centeni singulis ex plebe comites," would be still earlier proof, if "centenus comes" could be translated like medieval Latin "Hundredes-graf." As it is, the passage is inexplicable. Germania, cap. 12.

2 The value of this argument is a little diminished by the fact that the names and limits of the hundreds have undergone a great change since the compilation of Domesday Book, when Buckinghamshire had eighteen hundreds instead of eight as at present, and Warwickshire ten against five.-Ellis's General Introduction to Domesday, p. xi. The two instances given are, however, the strongest; the broad fact still remains that the midland counties are less subdivided than the maritime.

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BRITISH NAMES AND INSTITUTIONS.

which they had first fought for and won, leaving the heart of the country to a more gradual process of military colonization by their sons. For a long time the Saxon, disliking towns, and without occasion to labour for his livelihood, would remain a soldier, encamped perhaps in a special district, but attending the gemot or comitia of his tribe. But intermixture with the Welsh or Britons among whom he lived, was unavoidable. Accordingly, hundreds of common words, relating especially to government, to agriculture, to household life and service, and to the arts of weaving, boat-building, carpentry, and smith's work, may still be traced in the limited Anglo-Saxon and Welsh vocabularies. In ages when there were no family names, the lower people would before very long adopt the names as they learned the language of their conquerors. Yet unmistakeable Keltic names, such as Puch, Pechthelm, and Maban, are found attached to Anglo-Saxon charters, and designating persons of rank. Keltic missionaries assisted Augustine and his followers in their labours; and Paulinus, the first archbishop of York, has been claimed as Rum Map Urbgen. The names of places have been less permanent. Yet even here our rivers, Cam and Avon, and the frequent combination of syllables such as man, pen, kil, and maes, with Saxon words, show that the race who once held our country was not suddenly extinguished.3 If the Roman towns in some cases fell into decay, the poverty of a war-stricken people, and the decline of commerce, and of the arts of peace, will account for it. But the days of the

1 Davies, Philolog. Trans., v., 1857. Garnett, Philolog. Trans., vol. i., p. 171; vol. ii., pp. 15, 77. Mr. Kemble seems to accept Mr. Garnett's conclusions.-Saxons in England, vol. i., pp. 21-22. Brandes, in his Ethnographische Verhaeltnisse der Kelten und Germanen, gives as instances the words glaive, lance, spear, basket, plaster, gimlet, brush, block, boots, towel, stoup, gable, onion, bran, grease, mackerel, turbot, tin, pewter. Compare two interesting lectures by Mr. Gaskell on the Lancashire dialect.

2 Kemble, Proceedings of Archæol. Institute, 1845; Philolog. Trans., v., 1857. 3 Compare a list of British etymons in the local names of a single county in "The Ethnology of Cheshire," by Professor Earle. Of course, the few Roman names still to be traced come in evidence of this point.

UNBROKEN INFLUENCE OF ROME.

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great Roman feasts were still celebrated under Christian titles;1 the Roman colleges of trade were continued as guilds; Roman local names were preserved by the conquerors as they found them; Roman law has formed the basis of the Saxon family system, and of the laws of property. The Saxon conquest was a change of the highest moment, no doubt, but it did not break up society; it only added a new element to what it found. The Saxon state was built upon the ruins of the past.2

1 The Saturnalia of Christmas-tide, present-giving on the day of the Newyear, and the connection of May-day and All-Hallow's-Eve with the flowers and fruits of the season, those days being old festivals of Flora and Pomona. -Brand's Antiquities, vol. i.

2 Mr. Kemble gave up in despair the attempt to construct a history of the progress of the Saxon conquest. It is certain that we have no reliable sources, and that dates and facts in the accounts we have cannot be reconciled. Gildas,

in whom some faith has been placed, seems to me to belong to the seventh century, or at least to the end of the sixth; his prophecy of a hundred and fifty years' war between Saxons and Britons looks very much as if made after the event. I therefore give up the chronology as probably the work of a later age; and I place no confidence in genealogies where a step may easily have been missed. But I think the broad facts of the conquest may easily have been remembered by the different tribes. The conjecture of Nennius, that Ambrosius was the last Roman in England, shows that he was puzzled by the name, and had not invented it. It is an interesting question whether the use of parchment did not die out in the fifth and sixth centuries. Literature would be the art most easily lost. And it excites suspicion to find the Saxons using a Runic alphabet adapted for wood and stone, till, at the coming of Augustine, they adopt the Roman alphabet, and record their laws.

THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE.

DISTINCTION OF ANGLES, SAXONS, AND JUTES.-ANGLO-SAXON PHYSIQUE AND CHARACTER.-POSITION OF WOMEN.-ABSENCE OF THE FAMILY FEELING.CIVILIZATION.-RANKS AND THEIR PRIVILEGES.-BRITISH POPULATION.ODINISM OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

WHO the different tribes were by whom Roman Britain was subdued is not altogether easy to decide. Historians have been struck by the fact that the invaders were known as Saxons to the Britons, while they gave the country in later times the name of England or Angle-land. Anyhow, Angle and Saxon would seem to have been the two great divisions recognized. The Angles were probably Danish, or at least Low German, rather than Frisian; they would therefore be connected with the Jutes, who colonized Kent and the Isle of Wight; and this is confirmed by the analogies of the Northumbrian and Kentish dialects. Apart from evidence, it is natural to suppose that the Anglian track of conquest, north and east, bore some relation to the situation of their homes on the continent.. The populations of the kingdoms north of the Humber, of East

*

1 The analogies of the Kentish and Northumbrian dialects have been pointed out by Mr. Kemble.-Philolog. Trans., vol. ii., 36. For the analogies of early Northumbrian and Danish, I only know the vague statement, "Lingua Danorum Anglicanæ loquela vicina est."-Script. Rer. Dan., vol. v., p. 26. Professor Earle writes me word, "The Anglian (present Northumbrian and Scots dialect, e. g., Burns) is in fact Platt-Deutsch. Still it is quite true that the difference between it and Danish was not such as to create severance or bar coalescence." The real evidence of the connection is, I think, to be found in history, not in philology, and must not be pressed unduly. It is curious that the name Horsa, derived from hrosya to whinny, (onomato-poetic,) although given by Viatka as old Frisian, at present only exists in a Swedish patois. -Almguist's Amalia Hillner, vol. i., p. 85.