20
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
attempt to wrest new settlements from the British.
But no authentic record remains of the slow and
gradual progress that would have attended the con-
quest of a brave and united people, nor is any such
consistent with the accounts the British authors
have left of the disorganized and disarmed condi-
tion of the population. A skirmish, carried on by
very small numbers on either side, seems generally
to have decided the fate of a campaign. Steadily
from east to west, from south to north, the sharp
axes and long swords of the Teutons hewed their
way : wherever opposition was offered, it ended in
the retreat of the aborigines to the mountains,—
fortresses whence it was impossible to dislodge
them, and from which they sometimes descended
to attempt a hopeless effort for the liberty of their
country or revenge upon their oppressors. The
ruder or more generous of their number may have
preferred exile and the chances of emigration to
Subjectionathome1; but the mass of the people,
accustomed to Roman rule or the oppression of
native princes2, probably suffered little by a change
of masters, and did little to avoid it. At even a
later period an indignant bard could pour out his
patriotic reproaches upon the Loegrians who had
1 Many beyond a doubt found a refuge in Brittany among tbeir
brethren and co-religionists who had long been settled there. Conf.
Ermold. Nigel, bk. iɪi. v. 11. in Pertz, ii. 490. The Cumbrians and
Welsh had probably been as little subdued by the Romans as they
were by the Saxons.
a Gildas does not spare the native princes : see Epist. querul.
passim ; and when every excuse has been made for the exaggerations
of an honest zeal, we must believe the condition of the people to have
been bad in the extreme.
CH. I.]
SAXON AND WELSH TRADITIONS.
21
condescended to become Saxons. We Ieam that at
first the condition of the British under the German
rule was fair and easy, and only rendered harsher
in punishment of their unsuccessful attempts at
rebellion1 ; and the laws of Ini, a Westsaxon king,
show that in the territories subject to his rule, and
bordering upon the yet British lands, the Welsh-
man occupied the place of a,perioecian rather than
a Iieloti. Nothing in fact is more common, or less
true, than the exaggerated account of total exter-
minations and miserable oppressions, in the tradi-
tional literature of conquered nations ; and we may
very safely appeal even to the personal appearance
of the peasantry in many parts of England, as evi-
dence how much Keltic blood was permitted to sub-
sist and even to mingle with that of the ruling Ger-
mans ; while the signatures to very early charters
supply us with names assuredly not Teutonic, and
therefore probably borne by persons of Keltic race,
occupying positions of dignity at the courts of
Anglosaxon kings3.
l “ Quorum illi qui Northwallos, id est Aquilonales Britones diceban-
tur, parti Westsaxonum regum obvenerant. Illi quondam consuetis
servitiis seduli, diu nil asperum τetulere, sed tunc rebellionem médi-
tantes, Kentuuinus rex tarn anxia caede perdomuit, ut nihil ulterius
sperarent. Quare et ultima malorum accessit captivis tributaria func-
tio ; ut qui antea пес solam umbram palpabant Iibertatis, nunc iugum
Subiectiomspalam ingemiscerent.” W. Malmsb. Vit. Aldhelmi, Ang.
Sac. ii. 14.
2 Leg. Ini, § 32, 33.
3 See a tract of the author’s in the Proceedings of the Archaeological
Institute, 1846, on Anglosaxon names. From some very interesting
papers read by the Rev. R. Garnett before the Philological Society in
1843,1844, we learn that a considerable proportion of the words which
denote the daily processes of agriculture, domestic life, and generally
indoor and outdoor service, are borrowed by us from the Keltic.