took the kingdom; and after two years they fought against the Britons at a place called 'Crecgan-Ford,' and there slew four thousand men; and the Britons then forsook Kent-land and in mighty-terror fled to LondonBurgh." The last battle is described by Henry of Huntingdon in language which seems to have been taken from some heroic poem of which the original no longer exists. "When the Britons went into the war-play they could not bear up against the unwonted numbers of the Saxons, for more of them had lately come over, and these were chosen men, and they horribly gashed the bodies of the Britons with axes and broadswords."2 "And about eight years afterward Hengist and 'Ash' fought against the Welsh near Wipped's-Fleet, and there they slew twelve princes; and one of their own thanes was slain, whose name was Wipped. And after eight years were fulfilled, Hengist and Ash' fought again with the Welsh, and took unnumbered spoil; and the Welsh fled from the English as from fire. And after fifteen years' Ash' came to the kingdom, and for twenty-four years he was king of the Kentish men.' The commentators have sought in vain to harmonize these conflicting legends. Ebbesfleet, in Thanet, is usually identified with the landing-place, and the sites of the two principal battles are placed at Aylesford and Crayford on the Medway. But the matter abounds in difficulties, and from neither of these documents is it possible to reach any satisfactory conclusion concerning the early days of the conquest. Gildas is a more important witness. He was a British ecclesiastic, born in the town of Alcluyd, now Dumbarton, as he states himself, in the year of the pugna Badonica, or "Siege of Mount Badon," which a chronological table, called Annales Cambrenses, places in the year 526. Referring to this siege as having taken place forty-four years before he was writing, his history dates from over a century after the supposed landing of Hengist. Like his brother, the famous bard Aneurin-if Aneurin was his brother, for one theory is that Aneurin and Gildas were the same person-he commenced his career as a bard, or composer of poetry, in his native language. He was eventually converted to Christianity, and became a zeal 1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ann., 449, 455, 457. A. S. Chron., Ann., 465, 473. ous preacher of his new religion. Gildas is the author of two declamatory effusions, the one commonly known as his history, De Excidio Britannia Liber Querulus; the other, De Excidio Britanniæ et Britonum Exulatione. They both consist principally of violent invectives directed against his own countrymen, not less than against their continental invaders and conquerors, and throw but little light upon the obscure period to which they relate. He was one of those who eventually retired to Brittany, where he died. He is said to lie buried in the cathedral of Vannes. As this author wrote in the middle of the sixth century, he may be taken as representing the opinions of men who might themselves have taken part in the war. But he himself made no pretence to anything like historical accuracy. “If there were any records of my country," he said, "they were burned in the fires of the conquest, or carried away on the ships of the exiles, so that I can only follow the dark and fragmentary tale that was told me beyond the sea." No lamentation was ever keener in note, or more obscure in its story, than the book in which he recounted "the victory and crimes of Britain, the coming of a last enemy more dreadful than the first, the destruction of the cities, and the fortunes of the remnant that escaped." His work can hardly be considered a history, but seems to be rather intended for a dramatic description of an episode in the history of Cumbria. The drama begins in the year 450, when the Emperor Marcian reigned in the east and Valentinian the Third in the west. "The time was approaching when the iniquity of Britain should be fulfilled; the rumor flew among the people that their old invaders were preparing a final assault; a pestilence brooded over the land, and left more dead than the living could bury," and the complaint is swollen by invectives against the stubbornness of the rulers and the brutishness of the princes. We are brought to the chamber of Gwrtevyrn and his nobles, debating what means of escape might be found. "Then the eyes of the proud king and of all his councilors were darkened, and this help, or this death-blow they devised, to let into our island the foes of God and man, the fierce Saxons, whose name is accursed, as it were a wolf into the sheep-cotes, to beat off the nations of the north."1 1 Gildas, Hist., 4. The men came over, he says, in three "keels," loaded with arms and stores. Their first success in driving out the Scots and Picts was followed by the engagement of a larger force of mercenaries; but a quarrel soon arose about their pay, which grew into a general mutiny. Their allowance, he adds, was found for a long time, and so "the dog's mouth was stopped "-citing the native proverb; "but afterward they picked a quarrel, and threatened to plunder the island unless a greater liberality was shown." The historian denounces them in a mystical and fervid strain: they are "young lions," wasting the land, and "whelps from the lair of the German lioness"; and their settlement in Northumbria is described, in the words of the prophet, as the wild vine, that "brought forth branches and shot forth sprigs," the root of bitterness and the plant of iniquity. The enemy is next likened to a consuming fire, as he burst from his new home in the east and ravaged the island as far as the Western Sea; and the chronicler describes, with a horrible minuteness, the sack of some Cumbrian city, and the destruction of the faithful found therein. "And some of the miserable remnant were caught on the hills and slaughtered, and others were worn out with hunger, and yielded to a lifelong slavery. Some passed across the sea with lamentations instead of the sailor's song, chanting, as the wind filled their sails, 'Lord! Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat, and hast scattered us among the heathen'; but others trusted their lives to the clefts of the mountains, to the forests, and the rocks of the sea, and so abode in their country, though sore afraid.”1 The next original authority for the earlier portion of English history is Bede, upon whom the epithet of "Venerable" has been justly bestowed by the respect and gratitude of posterity. He was born some time between the years 672 and 677, at Yarrow, a village near the mouth of the Tyne, in the country of Durham, and was educated in the neighboring monastery of Wearmouth, 1 The principal migrations to Brittany took place in the years 500 and 513. With the consent of the ancient inhabitants, who acknowledged them as brethren of the same Celtic origin, the new settlers distributed themselves over the whole northern coast, as far as the little river Coësnon, and southward as far as the territory of the city of Veneti, now called Vannes. Many curious documents relating to the Britons of the migration are found in the Appendices to the Histories of Brittany, by Halléguen and Du Courson. See also E. Souvestre Les derniers Bretons. where he resided, as he himself relates, from the age of seven to that of twelve, during which he applied himself with all diligence, he says, to the meditation of the Scriptures, the observance of the regular discipline, and the daily practice of singing in the church. In his nineteenth year he took deacon's orders, and in his thirtieth he was ordained priest. From this date till his death, in 735, nearly three hundred years after the first Saxon invasion of Britain, he remained in his monastery, giving up his whole time to study and writing. His principal task was the composition of his celebrated Historia Ecclesiastica, a title which prepares us for a great preponderance of the ecclesiastical over the secular history of the country. Bede's own authorities, as we learn from his introduction, were certain of the most learned bishops and abbots of his contemporaries, of whom he sought special information as to the antiquities of their own establishments. All these facts must be borne in mind when we consider the value of his authority, that is, his means of knowing, as determined by the conditions of time and place. Now, it is from Bede that the current opinions as to the details of the Anglo-Saxon invasion are mainly taken; especially the threefold divisions into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, as well as the distribution of these three divisions over the different parts of England. His is the first statement concerning the Saxon invasions which contains the names of either the Angles or the Jutes. Gildas, who wrote more than one hundred and fifty years earlier, mentions only the Saxons. It is also the passage which all subsequent writers and chroniclers have either translated or adopted. It reappears in Alfred, and again in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, thus: Of Iotum comon Cantware J Wihtware ys seo mæið de nu eardað on Wiht cynn From the Jutes came the inhabitants of Kent and of Wight, that is, the race that now dwells 1 Advenerunt autem de tribus Germaniæ populis fortioribus, id est Saxonibus, Anglis, Jutis. De Jutarum origine sunt Cantuarii, et Victuarii, hoc est ea gens quæ Vectam tenet insulam et ea quæ usque hodie in provincia Occidentalium Saxonum Jutarum natio nominatur, posita contra ipsam insulam Vectam. De Saxonibus, id est, ea regione quæ nunc Antiquorum Saxonum cognominatur, venere Orientales Saxones, Meridiani Saxones, Occidui Saxones. Porro de Anglis hoc est de illa patria quæ Angulus dicitur, et ab illo tempore usque hodie manere desertus inter provincias Jutarum et Saxonum perhibetur, Orientales Angli, Mediterranei Angli, Merci, tota Northanhymbrorum progenies, id est illarum gentium quæ ad Boream Humbri fluminis inhabitant, cæterique Anglorum populi sunt orti.-Historia Ecclesiastica, i, 15. on West-Sexum pe man nu gyt hæt Iutna cyn of Eald-Seaxon comon East-Sexa Suð-Sexa West-Sexan. Of Angle comon se á siððan stod weste betwyx Iutum Seaxum East-Engla Midel-Angla Mearca ealle Norðhymbra. in Wight, and that tribe amongst the West Saxons which is yet called the Jute tribe. From the Old-Saxons came the East-Saxons, and South-Saxons, and West-Saxons. From the Angles' land (which has since always stood waste betwixt the Jutes and Saxons) came the East Angles, Middle - Angles, Mercians, and all the Northumbrians. Now, the Saxon Chronicle1 consists of a series of entries from the earliest times to the reign of King Stephen, each under its year-the date of the Anglo-Saxon invasion being the one usually given as A. D. 449. The value of such a record depends upon the extent to which the chronological entries are contemporaneous with the events noticed. When this is the case, the statement is of the highest historical value; when, however, it is merely taken from some earlier or later authority, or from tradition, it loses the character of a register, and becomes merely a series of supposed facts and dates, correct or incorrect, as the case may be. When the Anglo-Saxon really begins to be a contemporaneous register is uncertain; all we know is, that it is so for the latest, and not so for earlier entries. So, when it speaks of "a tribe among the West-Saxons, which is yet called the Jute tribe," it gives only a sort of contemporary evidence that in the time of Bede, from whose history the passage is copied, there was a people in England known by the name of Jutes; but that these were the descendants of a Jute tribe, believed to have been among the first invaders, some three hundred years previous, and all the time keeping up a distinct nationality among the West-Saxons, is by no means_certain. Indeed, the fact is by some greatly doubted. Bede calls them both Juta and Vitæ. King Alfred writes Geatum; Ethelwerd, Giotos; and Eotas, Iotas, Iutan, Iotan, and even Ghetes, are the various forms in Anglo-Saxon to denote a class of people supposed to have come from Jutland. Considering the unsettled state of orthography in those days, all these forms of Jut, Jót, Iut, Iot, Eot, Giot, 1 Generally cited by Mr. Freeman under the title of the English Chronicles, owing to his repudiation of the term Anglo-Saxon in the place of English. See pages 371-373, and 381-385. |