CHAPTER XII.

THE ENGLISH CONQUEST.

Troubles of the independent Britons-Fresh invasions of Picts and Scots-The Saxon Pirates-The Halleluia Victory-The appeal to Aetius-Beginnings of the English Conquest-Character of the authorities-Early Welsh poems-Nennius-Romances of Arthur-The history of Gildas-Its dramatic nature-Its imitation of the Vulgate -The story of Vortigern-His war with the mercenaries—The victory of Ambrosius-The Mons Badonicus-English accounts of the Conquest-The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle-Influence of ancient ballads-Description of the invasion-The three kindreds-Their continental home—Relative positions of Saxons Angles and Jutes -Theories as to other invading tribes-The Frisians-Argument from local names-The Conquest of Kent-Welsh traditions-Horsa's Tomb-Legends of Hengist The Conquest of Sussex-Destruction of Anderida-Fate of the Roman towns-Rise of the House of Cerdic-Conquest of Wessex--Victories of Cerdic and Cynric-The fate of Ceaulin-Genealogies of the Kings-The Conquest of Northumbria-Reign of Ida-Welsh traditions-Reign of Ælle-Of Edwin-Of Æthelfrith-General description of the conquest-Ancient poems-The sea-kings described by Sidonius--Their ships and crews-The lord and his companionsGradual degradation of the peasantry-Life in free townships-Co-operative husbandry-Community of ownership-Village customs-Heathen survivals-Festivals -Sacrifices-Character of English paganism—The gradual conversion of the English

kingdoms.

A

FEW years proved the vanity of the success which the Britons had gained and extinguished their hopes or dreams of freedom. No fire of patriotism replaced the discipline which had saved the Province from destruction. The Cities were unfit to endure the burden of government, and their territories were soon seized by the upstart kings or by pretenders affecting to continue an imperial authority. Famine and pestilence followed naturally on a civil war which had lapsed into a general brigandage; a fresh horde of Picts swarmed in between the Walls, and new fleets from Ireland were ravaging the Cumbrian shore.1

1 Bede, Hist. Eccl. i. 12; Gildas, Hist. 20.

The worst danger lay in the raids of the German corsairs. The sea-kings sailed with a few ships from the "Saxon Islands" by the Elbe, to lie off a port or run into an unguarded estuary, ready to fall in with any larger enterprise to land a pirate-crew and to earn a share of the plunder. Such were the deeds of which the fame remains in songs of Beowulf and the wandering Hengist, of the cruisers on the "flint-gray flood" and treasure gained by axe and sword "over the gannet's bath and over the whale's home."

One victory of the Christians is recorded in the Life of St. Germanus, who visited this country in the year 429 in company with St. Lupus of Troyes. The incidents of the mission were distorted into the romance of "Nennius," where the miracles of the Saint are interwoven with the treacheries of Hengist and the crimes or follies of King Vortigern; but allusions to the "Halleluia Victory" are found in the best contemporary literature, as in Pope Gregory's Commentaries, in the letters of Sidonius to St. Lupus, and in the biography of Germanus compiled by the learned priest of Lyons.1

The very celebrity of the event is a proof of the general ill-fortune of the Britons. The two bishops had been sent

1 Prosper Aquit. Chron. anno 429; Constantius, Vita Germani. 28; Bede, Hist. Eccl. i. 17; Usher, Primord. 333; Rees, Welsh Saints, 122; Haddan, Councils, i. 17, 20. Pope Gregory alludes to the battle in his Commentary on Job: "Ecce! lingua Britanniæ . . . cœpit Alleluia sonare": a passage which Bede by an anachronism refers to Augustine's mission, Hist. Eccl. ii. 1. Sidonius appears to refer to the same battle in a letter to St. Lupus: "Dux veterane et peritissime tubicen ad Christum a peccatis receptui canere." Sidon. Apoll. Epist. vi. 1. For the correspondence of Sidonius with Constantius of Lyons, see the same collection, Epist. i. 1, and vii. 18.

to Verulam to confute the heretics who accused "their Maker or their making or their fate" and sought too great a licence of Free Will. During the spring of the year following, the missionaries resumed their enterprise and visited the Valley of the Dee. The country was infested by Picts and Saxons, and it was feared that they might storm the camp where the British forces were concentrated. The bishops of Gaul were chosen for their political capacities: Germanus was accustomed to war and was easily persuaded to help his converts against the heathen. Easter Sunday was spent in baptising an army of penitents; the orthodox soldiers were posted in an ambuscade, and the pagans fled panic-stricken at the triple "Halleluia" which suddenly echoed among the hills.

The

An annalist of doubtful authority has reported, under the year 441, that Britain "after many troubles and misfortunes was brought under the dominion of the Saxons":" but we can hardly date the commencement of the Conquest before the appeal to the Patrician Aetius or the second visit of Germanus. The bishop returned in a.D. 447, and his biography contains not a word of any such revolution or sudden triumph of paganism. The date of the letters of appeal is fixed by the form of their address: "The groans of the Britons to Aetius for the third time. Consul. The savages drive us to the sea and the sea casts us back upon the savages: so arise two kinds of death, and we are either drowned or slaughtered." The Third Consulate of Aetius fell in A.D. 446, a year memorable in the West as the beginning of a profound calm

1 Prosper Tiro makes this statement, under the head of the 10th year of Theodosius, in his continuation of the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine.

which preceded the onslaught of Attila. The complaint of Britain has left no trace in the poems which celebrated the year of repose; and our Chronicles are at any rate wrong when they attribute its rejection to the stress of a war with the Huns.' It is possible, indeed, that the appeal was never made, and that the whole story represents nothing but a rumour current in the days of Gildas among the British exiles in Armorica.

Of the Conquest itself no accurate narrative remains. The version which is usually received is based in part on the statements in the histories of Gildas and Nennius and in part upon Chronicles which seem to owe much to lost heroic poems in which the exploits of the English chieftains were commemorated.

The Welsh poems throw little light on the matter. The bards were for the most part content to trace the dim outlines of disaster, and to indicate by an allusion the issue of a fatal battle or the end of some celebrated warrior. The poems of the sixth century, at any rate in the form in which they have descended to our times, are too vague and obscure to be useful for the purposes of history." Here and there one may recognise an episode of the ravages of "the Flame-bearer" or a picture of Ida or "Ulf at the ford." We must admire, without localising the incidents, the elegies on "the cold Hall of Cyndylan,” on the graves which "the rain bedews and the thicket

1 Gildas, Hist. 20; Bede, Hist. Eccl. i. 13. See the poem by Merobaudes on the Third Consulate of Aetius, Carm. v. 5, 8, and Sidon. Apoll. Carm. i. 192.

2 On the whole subject of these poems, see Skene's "Four Ancient Books of Wales," from which the translations in the text are adapted, and compare Aneurin's "Gododin," in Ab Ithel's edition, and the criticisms in Nash's "Taliesin" and Stephens's "Literature of the Cymry."

covers, on the red and dappled chargers of the brave Geraint. Aneurin's epic itself is wanting in all precision. of detail. It is the history of a long war of races compressed under the similitude of a battle into a few days of ruin, like the last fight in the Völuspa, "an axe-age a sword-age and shields shall be cloven, a storm-age a wolfage ere the World sinks."

The British historians were hardly more explicit. The collection of Welsh and Anglian legends which passes under the name of Nennius contains a few important facts about Northumbria mixed up in confusion with genealogies and miracles and fragments of romance. Here too we get the list of the twelve battles of Arthur, with their Welsh names "which were many hundred years ago unknown": "but who Arthur was," to use Milton's words, "and whether any such reigned in Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason: for the Monk of Malmesbury, and others whose credit hath swayed most with the learned sort, we may well perceive to have known no more of this Arthur nor of his doings than we now living, and what they had to say transcribed out of Nennius, a very trivial writer, . . . or out of a British book, the same which he of Monmouth set forth, utterly unknown to the world till more than six hundred years after the days of Arthur." We shall therefore say but little of the doings of the Blameless King who "thrust the

1 The whole account of Arthur in the Third Book of Milton's History should be compared with the traditions in "Nennius" and the modern interpretations collected by Mr. Skene in the "Four Ancient Books of Wales." "Hic est Arthur de quo Britonum nugæ hodieque delirant; dignus plane quem non fallaces somniarent fabulæ, sed veraces prædicarent historiæ." Will. Malmesb. Gesta. i. 8.