The Saxons Enter Britain.
“WHILST Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island separated itself [A. D. 409] from the body of the Roman empire. The regular forces, which guarded that remote province, had been gradually withdrawn; and Britain was abandoned without defense to the Saxon pirates, and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of their own strength. . . . Britain was irrecoverably lost. But as the emperors wisely acquiesced in the independence of a remote province, the separation was not embittered by the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of national friendship. This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and military government, and the independent country, during a period of forty years [A. D. 409-449] till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns.”—Gibbon, Dec. and Fall, chap. 31, par. 41, 42. “Here, then, in the year 409, was our England an independent State. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—the curious but meager record of early events, which is supposed to have existed in the time of Alfred, and even to have been partly compiled by that great king—there is the following entry which singularly agrees with the chronology of Greek and Latin historians:— “A. 409.—This year the Goths took the city of Rome by storm, and after this the Romans never ruled in Britain, and this was about eleven hundred and ten years after it was built. Altogether they ruled in Britain four hundred and seventy years since Caius Julius first sought the land.”—Knight’s History of England, chap. 4, last paragraph. “It was to defend Italy against the Goths that Rome in the opening of the fifth century withdrew her legions from Britain, and from that moment the province was left to struggle unaided against the Picts. Nor were these its only enemies. While marauders from Ireland, whose inhabitants then bore the name of Scots, harried the West, the boats of Saxon pirates, as we have seen, were swarming off its eastern and southern coasts. For forty years Britain held bravely out against these assailants; but civil strife broke its powers of resistance, and its rulers fell back at last on the fatal policy by which the empire invited its doom while striving to avert it,—the policy of matching barbarian against barbarian. By the usual promises of land and pay a band of warriors was drawn for this purpose from Jutland in 449, with two ealdormen, Hengist and Horsa, at their head. If by English history we mean the history of Englishmen in the land which from that time they made their own, it is with this landing of Hengist's war-band that English history begins. They landed on the shores of the Isle of Thanet at a spot known since as Ebbsfleet. No spot can be so sacred to Englishmen as the spot which first felt the tread of English feet.”—Green’s England, chap. 1, par. 17. “Hengist and Horsa, who, according to the Anglo-Saxon historians, landed in the year 449 on the shore which is called Ypwinesfleet, were personages of more than common sort. ‘They were the sons of Wihtglis; Wihtglis son of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden.’ So says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and adds, ‘From this Woden sprung all our royal families.’ These descendants, in the third generation, from the great Saxon divinity, came over in three boats. They came by invitation of Wyrtgeone—Vortigern—king of the Britons. The king gave them land in the southeast of the country, on condition that they should fight against the Picts; and they did fight, and had the victory wheresoever they came. And then they sent for the Angles, and told them of the worthlessness of the people and the excellences of the land. This is the Saxon narrative.”—Knight’s England, chap. 5, par. 6. “The work for which the mercenaries had been hired was quickly done, and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the winds in a battle fought on the eastern coast of Britain. But danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the Jutes themselves. Their fellow-pirates must have flocked from the Channel to their settlement in Thanet; the inlet between Thanet and the mainland was crossed, and the Englishmen won their first victory over the Britons in forcing their passage of the Medway at the village of Aylesford. A second defeat at the passage of the Cray drove the British forces in terror upon London; but the ground was soon won back again, and it was not till 465 that a series of petty conflicts which had gone on along the shores of Thanet made way for a decisive struggle at Wippedsfleet. Here, however, the overthrow was so terrible that from this moment all hope of saving Northern Kent seems to have been abandoned, and it was only on its southern shore that the Britons held their ground. Ten years later, in 475, the long contest was over, and with the fall of Lymne, whose broken walls look, from the slope to which they cling, over the great flat of Romney Marsh, the work of the first English conqueror was done.”—Green’s England, chap. 1, par. 18. Other such events followed fast, of which we will now have Gibbon to tell the story, and close the narrative of the Saxon conquest of Britain:— “While the kingdoms of the Franks and Visigoths were established in Gaul and Spain, the Saxons achieved the conquest of Britain, the third great diocese of the Præfecture of the West.” “About forty years after the dissolution of the Roman Government, Vortigern appears to have obtained the supreme, though precarious, command of the princes and cities of Britain. That unfortunate monarch has been almost unanimously condemned for the weak and mischievous policy of inviting a formidable stranger to repel the vexatious inroads of a domestic foe. . . . Vortigern could only balance the various perils, which assaulted on every side his throne and his people; and his policy may deserve either praise or excuse, if he preferred the alliance of those barbarians, whose naval power rendered them the most dangerous enemies, and the most serviceable allies. Hengist and Horsa, as they ranged along the eastern coast with three ships, were engaged, by the promise of an ample stipend, to embrace the defense of Britain; and their intrepid valor soon delivered the country from the Caledonian invaders. “The Isle of Thanet, a secure and fertile district, was allotted for the residence of these German auxiliaries, and they were supplied, according to the treaty, with a plentiful allowance of clothing and provisions. This favorable reception encouraged five thousand warriors to embark with their families in seventeen vessels, and the infant power of Hengist was fortified by this strong and seasonable reinforcement. The crafty barbarian suggested to Vortigern the obvious advantage of fixing, in the neighborhood of the Picts, a colony of faithful allies; a third fleet of forty ships, under the command of his son and nephew, sailed from Germany, ravaged the Orkneys, and disembarked a new army on the coast of Northumberland, or Lothian, at the opposite extremity of the devoted land. It was easy to foresee, but it was impossible to prevent, the impending evils. The two nations were soon divided and exasperated by mutual jealousies. The Saxons magnified all that they had done and suffered in the cause of an ungrateful people; while the Britons regretted the liberal rewards which could not satisfy the avarice of those haughty mercenaries. The causes of fear and hatred were inflamed into an irreconcilable quarrel. The Saxons flew to arms; and if they perpetrated a treacherous massacre during the security of a feast, they destroyed the reciprocal confidence which sustains the intercourse of peace and war.”—Gibbon, Dec. and Fall, chap. 38, par. 32, 33.