10
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
in England long previous to the middle of the fifth
century. It appears to me that the presence of
Roman emperors recruiting the forces with which
the throne of the world was to be disputed, from
among the hardiest populations of the continent,
must not only have led to the settlement of Teu-
tonic families in this island, but also to the main-
tenance, on their part, of a steady intercourse with
their kinsmen who remained behind. The military
colony, moreover, which claimed to be settled upon
good arable land, formed the easiest and most ad-
vantageous mode of pensioning the emeriti', and
many a successful Caesar may have felt that his
own safety was better secured by portioning his Ger-
man veterans in the fruitful valleys of England,
than by settling them as doubtful garrisons in
Lombardy or Campania.
The fertile fields which long before had merited
the praises of the first Roman victor, must have of-
fered attractions enough to induce wandering Sax-
ons and Angles to desert the marshes and islands
of the Elbe, and to call Frisian adventurers over
from the sands and salt-pools of their home. If in
the middle of the fifth century Saxons had esta-
blished regular settlements at Bayeux1 ; if even
before this time the country about Grannona bore
the name of Littus Saxonicum2, we may easily be-
1 Saxones Baiocassini. Greg. Turon, v. 27 ; x. 9.
2 Grannona in Iittore Saxonico. Notit. Imp. Occid. C. 86. Du
Cliesne Hist. i. p. 3. The Totingas, who have left their name to Toot-
ing in Surrey, are recorded also at Totingaham in the county of Bou-
logne. Leo, Rectitudines singularum personarum, p. 26.
CH. ɪ.]
SAXON AND WELSH TRADITIONS.
11
Iieve that at still earlier periods other Saxons had
found over the intervening ocean a way less dan-
gerous and tedious than a march through the ter-
ritories of jealous or hostile neighbours, or even
than a coasting voyage along barbarous shores
defended by a yet more barbarous population. A
north-east wind would, almost without effort of
their own, have carried their ships from Helgoland
and the islands of the Elbe, or from Silt and Rom-
sey1, to the Wash and the coast of Norfolk. There
seems then every probability that bodies more or
less numerous, of Coast-Germans, perhaps actually
of Saxons and Angles, had colonized the eastern
shores of England long before the time generally
assumed for their advent2. The very exigencies of
military service had rendered this island familiar
to the nations of the continent : Batavi, under their
own national chieftains, had earned a share of the
Roman glory, and why not of the Roman land, in
1 Ptolemy calls the islands at the mouth of the Elbe, Σaξ6vωv vησoι
τptκ. Zeuss considers these to be Fohr, Silt and Nordstrand. Die
Deutschen, p. 150. Lappenberg sees in them, North Friesland, Eider-
stedt, Nordstrand, Wickingharde and Bocingharde. Thorpe, Lap. i.
87. It seems hardly conceivable that Frisians, who occupied the coast
as early as the time of Caesar, should not have found their way by sea
to Britain, especially when pressed by Roman power : see Tac. Ann.
xiii. 54.
2 Hengest defeated the Picts and Scots at Stamford in Lincolnshire,
not far from the Nene, the Witham and the Welland, upon whose banks
it is nearly certain that there were German settlements. Widukind’s
story of an embassy from the Britons to the Saxons, to entreat aid, is
thus rendered not altogether improbable : but then it must be under-
stood of Saxons already established in England, and on the very line of
march of the Northern invaders, whom they thus took most effectually
in flank. Compare Geoflry’s story of Vortigern giving Hengest lands
in Lincolnshire, etc.