its enemies and oppressors; and having driven the Picts and Scots into the barren extremity of the island, he shut and barred them in with a new wall, advanced as far as the remotest of the former; and, what had hitherto been imprudently neglected, he erected the intermediate A. D. 368. space into a Roman province, and a regular government, under the name of Valentia. But this was only a momentary relief. The empire was perishing by the vices of its constitution.

Each province was then possessed by the inconsiderate ambition of appointing a head to the whole; although when the end was obtained, the victorious province always returned to its ancient insignificance, and was lost in the common slavery. A great army of Britons followed the fortune of Maximus, whom they had raised to the imperial titles, into Gaul. They were there defeated; and from their A. D. 388. defeat, as it is said, arose a new people. They are supposed to have settled in Armorica, which was then, like many other parts of the sickly empire, become a mere desert; and that country, from this accident, has been since called Bretagne.

The Roman province thus weakened afforded opportunity and encouragement to the barbarians again to invade and ravage it. Stilico, indeed, during the minority of Honorius, obtained some advantages over them, which procured a short intermission of their hostilities. But as the empire on the continent was now attacked on all sides, and staggered under the innumerable shocks which it received, that minister ventured to recall the Roman forces from Britain, in order to sustain those parts which he judged of more importance, and in greater danger..

On the intelligence of this desertion their A. D. 411. barbarous enemies break in upon the Britons, and are no longer resisted. Their ancient protection withdrawn, the people became stupified with terror and despair. They petition the emperor for succour in the most moving terms. The emperor, protesting his weakness, commits them to their own defence, absolves them from their allegiance, and confers on them a freedom, which they have no longer the sense to value, nor the virtue to defend. The princes, whom after this desertion they raised and deposed with a

stupid inco..stancy, were styled emperors. So hard it is to change ideas to which men have been long accustomed, especially in government, that the Britons had no notion of a sovereign who was not to be emperor, nor of an emperor who was not to be master of the western world. This single idea ruined Britain. Constantine, a native of this island, one of those shadows of imperial majesty, no sooner found himself established at home, than, fatally for himself and his country, he turned his eyes towards the continent. Thither he carried the flower of the British youth; all who were any ways eminent for birth, for courage, for their skill in the military or mechanic arts: but his success was not equal to his hopes or his forces. The remains of his routed army joined their countrymen in Armorica, and a baffled attempt upon the empire a second time recruited Gaul and exhausted Britain.

The Scots and Picts, attentive to every advantage, rushed with redoubled violence into this vacuity. The Britons, who could find no protection but in slavery, again implore the assistance of their former masters. At that time Etius commanded the imperial forces in Gaul, and, with the virtue and military skill of the ancient Romans, supported the empire, tottering with age and weakness. Though he was then hard pressed by the vast armies of Attila, which like a deluge had overspread Gaul, he afforded them a small and temporary succour. This detachment of Romans repelled the Scots; they repaired the walls; and, animating the Britons by their example and instructions to maintain their freedom, they departed. But the Scots easily perceived and took advantage of their departure. Whilst they ravaged the country, the Britons renewed their supplications to Etius. They once more obtained a reinforcement, which again re-established their affairs. They were, however, given to understand that this was to be their last relief. The Roman auxiliaries were recalled, and the Britons abandoned to their own fortune for ever.

A. D. 432.

When the Romans deserted this island they left a country, with regard to the arts of war or government, in a manner barbarous, but destitute of that spirit, or those advantages, with which sometimes a state of barbarism is attended. They carried out of each province its proper and natural strength, and supplied by that of some

other, which had no connexion with the country. The troops raised in Britain often served in Egypt; and those which were employed for the protection of this island were sometimes from Batavia or Germany; sometimes from provinces far to the east. Whenever the strangers were withdrawn, as they were very easily, the province was left in the hands of men wholly unpractised in war. After a peaceable possession of more than three hundred years, the Britons derived but very few benefits from their subjection to the conquerors and civilizers of mankind. Neither does it appear that the Roman people were at any time extremely numerous in this island, or had spread themselves, their manners, or their language, as extensively in Britain as they had done in the other parts of their empire. The Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon languages retain much less of Latin than the French, the Spanish, or the Italian. The Romans subdued Britain at a later period; at a time when Italy herself was not sufficiently populous to supply so remote a province; she was rather supplied from her provinces. The military colonies, though in some respects they were admirably fitted for their purposes, had, however, one essential defect: the lands granted to the soldiers did not pass to their posterity; so that the Roman people must have multiplied poorly in this island, when their increase principally depended on a succession of superannuated soldiers. From this defect the colonies were continually falling to decay. They had also in many respects degenerated from their primitive institution. We must add, that in the decline of the empire a great part of the troops in Britain were barbarians, Batavians, or Germans. Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of its artisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the most wretched and forlorn.

Neque conjugiis suscipiendis neque alendis liberis sueti, orbas sine posteris domos relinquebant. Non enim, ut olim universæ legiones, cum tribunis et centurionibus, et suis cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam efficerent, sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio genere mortalium, repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia. Tacit. Annal. xiv. 27.

BOOK II.-CHAPTER I.

THE ENTRY AND SETTLEMENT OF THE SAXONS, AND THEIR CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY.

A. D. 447.

AFTER having been so long subject to a foreign dominion, there was among the Britons no royal family, no respected order in the state, none of those titles to government confirmed by opinion and long use, more efficacious than the wisest schemes for the settlement of the nation. Mere personal merit was then the only pretence to power. But this circumstance only added to the misfortunes of a people, who had no orderly method of election, and little experience of merit in any of the candidates. During this anarchy, whilst they suffered the most dreadful calamities from the fury of barbarous nations which invaded them, they fell into that disregard of religion, and those loose, disorderly manners, which are sometimes the consequence of desperate and hardened wretchedness, as well as the common distempers of ease and prosperity.

At length, after frequent elections and deposings, rather wearied out by their own inconstancy than fixed by the merit of their choice, they suffered Vortigern to reign over them. This leader had made some figure in the conduct of their wars and factions. But he was no sooner settled on the throne than he showed himself rather like a prince born of an exhausted stock of royalty in the decline of empire, than one of those bold and active spirits, whose manly talents obtain them the first place in their country, and stamp upon it that character of vigour essential to the prosperity of a new commonwealth. However, the mere settlement, in spite of the ill administration of government, procured the Britons some internal repose, and some temporary advantages over their enemies the Picts. But having been long habituated to defeats, neither relying on their king nor on themselves, and fatigued with the obstinate attacks of an enemy whom they sometimes checked, but could never remove, in one of their national assemblies it was resolved to call in the mercenary aid of the Saxons, a powerful nation of Germany, which had been long by their piratical incursions terrible not only to them but to all the adjacent countries. This resolu

tion has been generally condemned. It has been said that they seem to have through mere cowardice distrusted a strength not yet worn down, and a fortune sufficiently prosperous. But as it was taken by general counsel and consent, we must believe that the necessity of such a step was felt, though the event was dubious. The event, indeed, might be dubious; in a state radically weak, every measure vigorous enough for its protection must endanger its existence.

There is an unquestioned tradition among the northern nations of Europe, importing, that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they call Asers. These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancient inhabitants of the Celtic and Cimbric original. The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin, or Wodin; first their general, afterwards their tutelar deity. The time of this great change is lost in the imperfection of traditionary history, and the attempts to supply it by fable. It is however certain that

the Saxon nation believed themselves the descendants of those conquerors; and they had as good a title to that descent as any other of the northern tribes; for they used the same language which then was, and is still,-spoken with small variation of the dialects in all the countries which extend from the polar circle to the Danube. This people most probably derived their name, as well as their origin, from the Sacæ, a nation of the Asiatic Scythia. At the time of which we write, they had seated themselves in the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein and Sleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast of the German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Rhine. In that tract they lived in a sort of military commonwealth of the ordinary German model under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Qdin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies. It was to this chief that the Britons applied themselves. They invited him by a promise of ample pay for his troops, a large share of their common plunder, and the Isle of Thanet for a settlement.

The army which came over under Hengist did not exceed fifteen hundred men. The opinion which the Britons had entertained of the Saxon prowess was well founded; for they had the principal share in a decisive victory which was