Anthropology The Human Challenge 14th Edition

Haviland Prins McBride Walrath 1133955975

9781133955979
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Chapter 11 – Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Which of the following scientists divided humans into subspecies based on geographic
location?
a. Johan Blumenbach
b. Carolus Linnaeus
c. Charles Darwin
d. Franz Boas
e. Fatimah Jackson
ANS: B DIF: Applied REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: New

2. In Blumenbach’s classification of races, light-skinned peoples from Europe and adjacent parts
of western Asia and northern Africa were part of which race?
a. European
b. Guinean
c. Dravidian
d. American Indian
e. Caucasian
ANS: E DIF: Applied REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: Pickup

3. Human genetic variation generally is distributed in a continuous range, with varying clusters
of frequency. The significance we give our variations, the way we perceive them—in fact,
whether or not we perceive them at all—is determined by our
a. genes.
b. origins.
c. culture.
d. physical traits.
e. intelligence.
 ANS: C DIF: Conceptual REF: Chapter Introduction
OBJ: 1 MSC: Pickup

4. German physician Johan Blumenbach divided humans into racial types by

a. intelligence.
b. height.
c. geographical origin.
d. genealogy.
e. hierarchy.
ANS: E DIF: Applied REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: New

5. The problem with the kinds of definitions of racial groups devised by 18th century Swedish
naturalist Carolus Linnaeus is that, besides being ethnocentric,
a. they confuse biological traits with cultural characteristics.
b. they do not include all of the traits by which these races are distinguished.
c. they are not scientific enough; that is, they do not include the frequencies with
which these characteristics occur in the population.
d. they argue that certain groups are superior to others because of their geographical
location.
e. they include too many categories to be functionally useful.
ANS: A DIF: Conceptual REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: Pickup

6. Who was Ota Benga?

a. He was the last member of his race of Twa pygmies
b. He was a Twa scientist who did research to overturn the biological basis of race
c. He was an anthropologist who worked to make the census racial categories more
accurate
d. He was a Twa pygmy who was captured and exhibited in a New York zoo
e. He was an African who underwent radical surgery to change his race
ANS: D DIF: Applied REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: New

7. One of the strongest scientific critics of racism in the U.S. during the early part of the 20th
century was anthropologist
a. Franz Boas.
b. Margaret Mead.
c. Clifford Geertz.
d. Bronislaw Malinowski.
e. Marvin Harris.
ANS: A DIF: Factual REF: The History of Human Classification
OBJ: 1 MSC: New
 8. Which anthropologist has been concerned for the ethical treatment of minorities in the human
genome project?
a. Margaret Mead
b. Franz Boas
c. Hortense Powdermaker
d. Fatimah Jackson
e. Farook Johanas
ANS: D DIF: Factual REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: Pickup

9. How does the definition of race differ from biology to anthropology?

a. Anthropologists see race as a cultural category, while biologists use this term to
indicate species variation
b. Anthropologists see race as a biological category, while biologists see race simply
as a genetic marker
c. Anthropologists do not acknowledge that racial categories exist, while biologists
continue to use this term for different species
d. Anthropologists argue that race is fixed by type, while biologists see race as an
arbitrary category
e. Anthropologists use race as a way of teaching people what is wrong with human
variation, while biologists use this term to divide living forms into different
taxonomic categories
ANS: A DIF: Conceptual REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

10. Which of the following is not a significant characteristic of race?

a. It is an arbitrary designation
b. No scientific criteria exists on how many differences it takes to make a race
c. No one group has exclusive possession of any gene or genes in the human gene
pool
d. Populations are genetically open
e. The genetic differences between populations, or groups, is greater than that
between any two human beings
ANS: E DIF: Applied REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

11. In a study of the differences between populations of humans, Richard Lewontin found that the
total amount of genetic variation between groups is
a. 37%.
b. 23%.
c. 14%.
d. 11%.
e. 7%.
 ANS: E DIF: Factual REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

12. Which field of science has begun commercially providing genomic data based on
mitochondrial DNA for ancestry purposes?
a. Genetic science
b. Human population genetics
c. Human growth and development science
d. Evolutionary biology
e. Forensic anthropology
ANS: B DIF: Factual REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

13. All of the following are challenges associated with using mtDNA to trace ancestry except:
a. it is inherited only through the mother’s line.
b. you are equally descended from all four grandparents, but mitochondrially
descended from only one.
c. 75% of your grandparents are invisible to an mtDNA analysis.
d. a mitochondrial non-match means nothing at all.
e. mtDNA is extremely significant in understanding one’s ancestry.
ANS: E DIF: Applied REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

14. What is the importance of ancestry research based on mitochondrial DNA?

a. It allows individual to trace disease in their family lines that could be potentially
fatal
b. It shows the importance of cultural beliefs and the symbolic power of
demonstrated ancestry
c. It allows us to reconstruct the human evolutionary tree and better understand our
history
d. It allows us to identify how our family migrated and also identify our distinct
biological heritage
e. It provides individuals with a valid way to trace inheritance and gain access to
legal representation
ANS: B DIF: Conceptual REF: Race as a Biological Concept
OBJ: 2 MSC: New

15. The racial categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau, e.g. White, Black, Hispanic, Alaskan
Native, American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, are large catchall
categories that include diverse people. To compound the situation, inclusion in one or another
of these categories is usually based on self-identification. Thus, in reality what we are dealing
with are not biological categories at all, but rather are
a. hypothetical categories.
b. cultural constructs.
c. social scientific jargon.
d. ethnic categories.
 e. politically correct labels.
ANS: B DIF: Conceptual
REF: The Conflation of the Biological into the Cultural Category of Race
OBJ: 3 MSC: Pickup

16. The physical extermination of one people by another is called

a. genocide.
b. racism.
c. infanticide.
d. ratiocination.
e. discrimination.
ANS: A DIF: Factual
REF: The Conflation of the Biological into the Cultural Category of Race
OBJ: 3 MSC: New

17. Which of the following best describes the hypodescent rule?

a. A law that allows minority racial groups special access to government services
b. A law that gives racial superiority to one group over another
c. Assigning an individual with mixed ethnicity to the minority group
d. Configuring an individual’s ancestry to omit any minority groups from being
known
e. Changing an individual’s birth data, such as their age, so that they can be placed in
a different social category
ANS: C DIF: Conceptual
REF: The Conflation of the Biological into the Cultural Category of Race
OBJ: 3 MSC: New

18. Approximately how many people died worldwide due to genocide in the 20th century?
a. 480 million
b. 162 million
c. 83 million
d. 43 million
e. 17 million
ANS: C DIF: Factual
REF: The Conflation of the Biological into the Cultural Category of Race
OBJ: 3 MSC: New

19. A doctrine by which one group justifies the dehumanization of others based on their
distinctive physical characteristics is called
a. racism.
b. discrimination.
c. hypodescent.
d. genocide.
e. ethnocide.
ANS: A DIF: Factual REF: The Social Significance of Race: Racism
OBJ: 3 MSC: Pickup
Another document from Scribd.com that is
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from Tangier to Hexham, and including three great “Dioceses” as the
divisions intermediate between prefectures and provinces were called:
Western Africa and Spain, Gaul and Britain. A noble portion was this,
for the junior partner of the imperial firm, and one which might have
satisfied the ambition even of a Napoleon. But there was one annoying
drawback to the greatness of the western Cæsar. After all the rest of the
empire had been restored to tranquillity the island of Britain still
remained outside the imperial orbit, and what made this circumstance the
more exasperating was the remembrance that it was due to the treachery
of an officer chosen by the emperors themselves. Desiring to check the
piratical expeditions of the Franks and Saxons who were already
beginning to infest both coasts of the British channel, Maximian, who
was at that time ruling and warring in Gaul, had entrusted the command
of a naval squadron to a certain Carausius, a man of mean extraction,
17
born either in Flanders or Ireland, who had already distinguished
himself by his bravery and his skill in naval warfare. From his strong
place of arms at Gesoriacum (Boulogne), Carausius soon made his
power felt by the barbarians, but before long Maximian had reason to
suspect that the officer of the empire was himself in secret league with at
least some of the pirates and shared their plunder. He summoned
Carausius to appear before him, but that astute personage, suspecting the
motive for the summons, hastily quitted Boulogne and sailed for Britain,
which in the disorganised condition of Roman affairs he had not much
difficulty in making his own.
Having declared himself emperor and having even constrained the
two legitimate Augusti to recognise him as a quasi-partner of their
dignity, Carausius actually succeeded in maintaining his position for six
years (287–293), perhaps the only time in the history of our island when
there has been a veritable “Emperor of Britain”. Of the character of his
government we have unfortunately no information except some
sentences of invective from professional rhetoricians; but at least the
numismatist has reason to remember his reign which has supplied our
museums with a multitude of coins. In these, while the obverse
represents the head of the self-made emperor, a middle-aged common-
place man who looks like a self-made manufacturer, the reverse bears
sometimes the well-known Roman emblems of the wolf and the twins; or
a lion with a thunderbolt in his mouth symbolises the valour of
Augustus; or a female milking a cow the fertility of his kingdom; while
in some of them the association with Jovius and Herculius (the titles of
the two legitimate Augusti) attests his share in the imperial partnership.
Notwithstanding this interchange of compliments it was felt at
headquarters that it was time that this separatist empire should come to
an end, and it was in fact chiefly to accomplish this that Constantius had
been created Cæsar of the west. The history of the campaign has to be
gathered with difficulty from the rhetoric of Mamertinus and Eumenius,
two professional panegyrists of the conqueror, but we seem to perceive
that Carausius or his pirate allies still held the harbour of Boulogne, and
that it was necessary to seal up the channel with beams of timber and
cargoes of stone to prevent their exit. Stormy weather then delayed for
some time the operations of Constantius, and meanwhile Carausius had
been assassinated by one of his officers named Allectus, who at once
assumed the purple and struck coins describing himself as Pious,
Fortunate and August.
For nearly three years Allectus reigned. At last, in 296, Constantius
set forth for the overthrow of this new usurper. “Other emperors,” cries
his flatterer, “have received the credit of victories won under their
auspices though they themselves were tarrying in Rome. You,
unconquered Cæsar! put yourself at the head of your troops; you gave
the signal to start, when sea and sky were alike turbid, notwithstanding
the hesitation of the other leaders. The wind struck obliquely on your
sail: you made your vessel tack. All the soldiers, enraptured, cried: ‘Let
us follow Cæsar wherever he leads us’. Fortune did indeed favour you.
We have heard from the companions of your voyage how the mists hung
low over the back of the sea so that the hostile fleet stationed in ambush
round the Isle of Wight never saw you pass. As soon as they touched the
shore of Britain your unconquered army set fire to all their ships, urged
surely, by some warning voice of your divinity, to seek their safety only
in fight and victory.” And so, with more of these pompous periods, the
orator describes how the usurper Allectus fled as soon as he saw the
imperial fleet, and fleeing fell into the hands of the soldiers of
Constantius, how half dead with terror he thus hastened to his death, and
by his neglect of all military precautions handed over an easy victory to
the imperial troops. “Scarcely one Roman was killed while all the hills
and plains around were covered with the ugly bodies of the slain. Those
dresses worn in barbarian fashion, those locks of bright red hue were
now all defiled with dust and gore. That standard bearer of rebellion
himself [Allectus], having in the hope of concealment stripped off the
purple robe which he had degraded by wearing it, now lay with scarce a
18
rag to cover his nakedness.” The orator then goes on to describe in
words of turgid obscurity how some of the soldiers of Constantius,
parted from the main body of the fleet in the fog which had baffled the
look-out of Allectus, wandered to the “oppidum Londiniense,” and there
were fortunate enough to meet and defeat the remains of the “mercenary
multitude” of the usurper’s forces which had taken refuge in that town.
We thank even the bombastic orator for some slight indication of what
was passing in the streets of the little Roman London at the end of the
third century.
It was, as we have seen, in the year 296 that Britain was recovered
for the empire by Constantius. Ten years afterwards that emperor, in
failing health and knowing that he had not long to live, was looking
anxiously eastwards for the arrival of his favourite son, the offspring of
his concubine Helena, the brave and brilliant soldier Constantine.
Diocletian and Maximian had both abdicated the empire. Constantius
Chlorus was now raised from the rank of Cæsar to the higher rank of
Augustus, but he shared that dignity with a jealous colleague, Galerius,
who had been allowed to name the two new Cæsars. Of those two junior
partners Constantine was not one. Worse than that, he was retained as a
kind of hostage at the Bithynian palace of Galerius, and it was doubtful
whether father and son would ever be allowed to meet again. But in a
moment of irresolution or of alarm Galerius gave the desired permission,
and Constantine, not risking the chance of its withdrawal, departed from
the court without formal leave-taking and hurried across Europe to
Boulogne where his father was then residing. It was currently reported
two centuries later that in order to prevent the possibility of pursuit he
ordered the post-horses at each imperial mutatio, which he did not
himself require, to be either killed or so mutilated as to make them unfit
for travel. Gibbon derides this “very foolish story,” but it is not easy to
understand why, if untrue, it should have obtained such general
acceptance.
However this may be, it is certain that Constantine arrived safely at
his father’s headquarters at Boulogne, shared with him the labours of a
short campaign against the Picts, and was present in his chamber, in the
Prætorian palace at Eburacum, when, worn out with toil and disease,
Constantius Chlorus breathed his last (July 25, 306). His own elevation
to the imperial dignity by the soldiers, who enthusiastically hailed him as
Augustus, followed immediately after, and we may fairly suppose that
the same place which had witnessed the death of the father witnessed
also the accession of the son. He speedily quitted Britain in order to take
part in that desperate game of empire, with partners constantly changing
and occasionally putting one another to death, from which after eighteen
years he finally arose sole emperor. With all this later life of his, with his
adoption of Christianity, with his choice of a new capital by the
Bosphorus, with his convocation of the Nicene council, we have here no
concern; but it is worth while to emphasise the fact that a reign so
immensely important for all the after-history of Europe and of the world
began in our island by the slow, wide-wandering river Ouse. Thus in a
certain sense York is the mother-city of Constantinople.
We come now to another blank half century in the history of Roman
Britain. Save for an obscure hint of the presence of the Emperor
Constans, son of Constantine, at some time between 337 and 350, we
have scarcely any information as to British affairs from the proclamation
of Constantine in 306 to the despatch of the elder Theodosius to Britain
in 367. This general, father of the more celebrated emperor of the same
name, was sent by the Emperor Valentinian to restore some degree of
order in the unhappy island, which had suffered from rapacious
governors, from accusations of disloyalty cruelly avenged, and more
recently from bloody inroads of the Picts and Scots with whom were
now joined a tribe who are called “the most valiant nation of the
Attacotti,” but who, if we may believe the extraordinary statement of St.
Jerome, were actually addicted to the practice of cannibalism. In the
three years of Theodosius’ command, the northern invaders were driven
back to their mountains, the inhabitants of “that ancient town which was
formerly called Londinium but which (in the fourth century) “more often
bore the name Augusta” were relieved from their terrors: a new province,
the geographical position of which is not made known to us, was staked
out and received the name Valentia, in compliment to the emperor. For
the time, but probably not for a long time, the blessings of “the Roman
peace” were restored to Britain. The general who had achieved this result
was shortly after executed at Carthage, a victim to the cowardly
suspicion and jealousy of the Emperor Valens, brother of Valentinian.
Soon, however, the whirligig of Time brought about a strange revenge.
Valens himself perished in the awful catastrophe of Hadrianople, the
battle in which the Visigoths utterly routed a great Roman army, the
battle which first brought home to the minds of men the possibility of the
collapse of the Roman empire. The nephew of Valens, the young and
generous Gratian, looking round for some man who as partner of his
throne might avert the menaced ruin, found none more suitable than the
son and namesake of the murdered pacifier of Britain, and accordingly,
in the year 379, Theodosius (whom historians have surnamed the Great)
was hailed as Augustus at Constantinople.
But now did Britain begin to rear that crop of rival emperors who
were the curse of Europe during some of the dying days of the western
empire. In 383 a general named Maximus, of whom an unfavourable
witness, the ecclesiastic Orosius, testifies that he was “vigorous and
honest and would have been worthy of the diadem if he had not, to
obtain it, broken his oath of loyalty” was almost against his will declared
emperor by the army. He crossed over into Gaul, carrying with him no
doubt the bulk of his army. He skilfully played on the disaffection of
Gratian’s legions, offended at the partiality which he had showed for his
barbarian auxiliaries; a general mutiny was organised; Gratian fled for
his life, was pursued and murdered near the city of Vienne. For five
years Theodosius had to endure the enforced partnership in the empire of
his benefactor’s murderer: then in 388 the smouldering hatred broke out
into a flame, and after a hard struggle Maximus was defeated and slain at
Aquileia, on the northern shore of the Adriatic (388). According to
traditions current two centuries later, this usurpation of Maximus and his
consequent withdrawal of the British legions in order to vindicate his
claims to the empire, were most important factors in the overthrow of
Roman power in Britain.
A large army, on paper, still existed in the island. It was probably
about the year 402 that the last edition of the Notitia Imperii, that edition
which has been handed down to posterity, was issued from the imperial
chancery. In this most valuable document—an army list and official
directory of both the eastern and western portions of the empire—we still
find cohorts of infantry and wings of cavalry stationed per lineam valli
(along the line of the Wall) as they had been for three centuries. We may,
however, doubt whether any Roman soldiers were actually keeping the
line of the Wall so late as 402. It is remarkable that very few coins have
been found in the ruins of the camps of a later date than the reign of
Gratian (375–83). If there were any such military units still there, they
were probably but the ghosts of their former selves.
To understand the political condition of our island at this time we
must have recourse to the pages of the Notitia, which elaborately sets
forth the various degrees of the civil and military hierarchy of the
empire. On one page we find:—
 T I P P G .
“Under his disposition are the Vicarii of Spain, of the Seven
Provinces of Gaul and of Britain.”

On a later page:—

“The Spectabilis V B .”

Under his disposition were five (civil) governors:—

The Consularis ofMaxima Cæsariensis.

„ Valentia.
The Præses of Britannia Prima.
„ Britannia Secunda.
„ Flavia Cæsariensis.

The limits and geographical position of these five districts (we are
not entitled to call them provinces) have not yet been ascertained, though
they have been often conjectured. It may be hoped that the discovery of
19
further inscriptions may enable us to fix them decisively.
Besides these civil officers there were, according to the
rearrangement of offices made by Diocletian, certain military
commandants, called comites and duces, of whom the count was,
contrary to medieval usage, generally of higher rank than the duke.
The Notitia introduces us to three of these officers:—
1. The Comes Britanniæ.
2. The Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam.
3. The Dux Britanniarum.
As to the first it gives us no information beyond the simple fact that
the Provincia Britannia was “under his disposition”. The obvious
conjecture is that numbers 2 and 3 were subject to him, but this is not
asserted, and it perhaps militates against this theory that they, like him,
belonged to the second grade in the official hierarchy, the spectabiles. It
is possible that his special duty was the defence of Mid-Britain against
the imperfectly subdued tribes of the Welsh mountains, and that the
Second legion at Caerleon and the Twentieth at Chester were for a time
under his orders for this purpose. The more interesting title for us is that
of “The Count of the Saxon Shore in Britain”. He had under his
command the garrisons of seven fortified places dotted around the
eastern and south-eastern coast of England, from the Wash to Beachy
20
Head. He had also at his bidding the prefect of the Second “Augustan”
legion, which had been moved from the quarters it had so long occupied
at Caerleon-upon-Usk to Rutupiæ, or Richborough, close to the Isle of
Thanet. The meaning of this arrangement is obvious. Like the Martello
towers, which were reared along the same coasts last century, these
fortresses were raised and garrisoned in order to defend that part of the
projecting coast of Britain which was most exposed to the attacks of the
Saxon pirates, already no doubt swarming in these seas in the fourth
century, and to become far more formidable in the fifth century. The
words, “per Britanniam,” added to the title of the spectabilis comes, are
used because, as the Notitia informs us, there was another Saxon shore
which needed to be guarded on the other side of the channel; and, taken
in this connexion, there is a special interest for us in the words of
21
Apollinaris Sidonius, bishop of Clermont, which show that in the
succeeding century the coasts of Gaul, as well as of Britain, were kept in
constant alarm by the Saxon sea-rovers.
3. Of the Duke of the Britains we have only here to remark that he
appears to have had under his disposition the Sixth legion, stationed at
York, and numerous detachments of auxiliary troops in Yorkshire,
Westmorland and Lancashire, and item per lineam valli (also along the
line of the wall) the various auxiliary cohorts raised in Spain, Gaul and
Germany, to whom reference has already been made, and who are to all
students of the literature of the Roman wall among the most interesting
elements of the army of the empire.
Meanwhile events were rapidly ripening towards the catastrophe
which was to make the solemn Notitia Imperii a mere hunting-ground for
the archæologist. In 395 died the great Emperor Theodosius, who had for
a generation staved off the ruin which seemed inevitable at the death of
Valens. He was succeeded by his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, who,
with about equal incapacity, presided over the collapse of the eastern and
the western half of the empire. For the first thirteen years, however, of
the reign of Honorius his incapacity was somewhat veiled by the courage
and ability of the Vandal soldier Stilicho, whom Theodosius had left as
the guardian of his son. When in the year 400 Alaric, the far-famed King
of the Goths, entered Italy, Stilicho undertook the long and wearisome
campaigns, partly, as it would seem, north of the Alps, but chiefly in
what we now call Piedmont and Lombardy, by which Alaric’s designs on
Rome were foiled, and at last in the year 403 the Goths were driven forth
from Italy. But in order to avert the danger which thus threatened the
heart of the empire, it was necessary seriously to weaken the defence of
its extremities. One of the three Roman legions quartered in Britain
(probably the Twentieth) was recalled to Italy and apparently never
returned. Three years after the repulse of Alaric came in 406 the great
cataclysm of the irruption of barbarian hordes, Vandals, Sueves,
Burgundians and Alans into Gaul, which led, though not immediately, to
the severance of Gaul and Spain from the empire. The inrush of the
barbarians spread terror even into Britain, and caused the soldiers, weary
of the inept government which was manifestly ruining the empire, to
elect an emperor on their own account, and set up, as it were, a
“government of national defence”. But revolutionary rulers of this kind
are more easily proclaimed than established. First a certain Marcus was
proclaimed: then as they found that “he did not suit their tempers” he
was slain, and a British citizen named Gratian was invested with the
purple, crowned with the diadem and surrounded with a bodyguard.
After four months Gratian also was deposed and murdered, and
thereupon a private soldier of the meanest rank, named Constantine, who
had nothing but that great historic name to recommend him, was robed in
the imperial purple. He at once crossed over into Gaul, where he
maintained himself with varying fortune for three or four years, being
even once, in 409, for a short time recognised as a legitimate partner in
the empire by Honorius. With his later fortunes, however, and with the
whole story of the fall of the Roman empire in the west we have no
further concern. We have heard of the exit of the legions, but we never
hear of their return, and we are probably justified in fixing on the date
407, the period of the usurper Constantine’s departure from our island, as
the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.
Writers and readers must alike lament the extremely jejune character
of the history of that occupation. Since we lost the guidance of Tacitus,
we have had scarcely anything that could be called a continuous and
intelligible narrative of events; nor, unless some happy fortune could
restore to us the lost books of Ammianus, is such literary assistance now
to be expected. We are thus thrown back on such information as
inscriptions, buried ruins, finds of coins may afford to the patient
archæologist. And these have done something for us, though we may
reasonably hope that the judicious use of the spade and pickaxe, guided
by science and not by mere capricious quest for curiosities, may do much
more.
We may here notice very briefly some of the chief contributions
which archæological research has thus made to history.
1. Of all the marks made by our imperial conquerors in this island,
the most distinct and ineffaceable was that made by them as road-
makers. Often indeed their works survive only as boundaries between
parishes or counties, but sometimes we can see the track still going
straight to its mark over hill and dale, and we say instinctively, “That
must be a Roman road”. It was certainly not mere unskilfulness or
ignorance of the science of road-making which led the stratores viarum
to draw their lines across the country with this uncompromising
directness. The prime object of the officer charged with the work was
essentially military, and for watching the movements of barbarian
insurgents or preventing the ravages of marauders, the crests of the hills
successively surmounted by the marching legions were invaluable posts
of observation.
The chief highways of the Romans, known to us for the most part by
the names given to them by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, converging, as
most of them do, towards “the town anciently named Londinium,”
coincide in a remarkable manner with the main lines of our modern
railroad communication. The Watling Street, running from the
neighbourhood of London to Etocetum (a little north of Birmingham)
and thence to Deva (Chester) and so on into Lancashire, corresponds
with the London and North-Western Railway; while another road which
generally bears the same name and which traverses Yorkshire and
Northumberland is less accurately represented by the North-Eastern.
Erming Street, from London to Doncaster, is often not far from the line
of the Great Northern; and Abona (on the Avon near Bristol) and Isca
Damnoniorum (Exeter) were reached by roads bearing now no special
names, but imitating in their general course the Great Western and
South-Western Railways. One great artery, the Fosse Way, may be
clearly traced between Axminster (in Devonshire) and the great colony
which now bears the name of Lincoln; but this road has no representative
in our railway system. The imperfect character of the Roman conquest of
the district which we now call Wales is evidenced by the feeble and
fragmentary traces of Roman roads now to be found in the principality.
There was, however, a road traversing the country from north to south,
from Carnarvon to Carmarthen, and thence by a somewhat circuitous
course to Caerleon-upon-Usk, and part of this road is still known by the
name of Sarn Helen. Is it possible that there is in this name some vague
and inaccurate remembrance of the mother of Constantine?
2. The sepulchral inscriptions which have been discovered in large
numbers in various parts of the island give us a little insight into the
domestic relations of the Roman garrison, as the votive altars do into
their sentiments concerning religion. The former class of inscriptions
always begin in the usual Roman style with a dedication to the Dii
Manes, the shade-gods, or, as we should say, the spirit of the departed
one, and often add some endearing epithet to the name, such as “a well-
deserving husband,” “a most religious wife who lived for thirty-three
years an unspotted life”. Where the age is mentioned it is most
frequently that either of a child or a person in middle life, the numbers
between thirty and forty being of frequent occurrence. This is probably
accounted for by the fact that veterans, whether officers or privates,
would generally return to their native land to spend the last years of their
lives. The religious inscriptions bring before us some interesting
phenomena, but are so far characterised by one memorable omission,
that of the new religion which was destined to supplant the old. The
ordinary Olympian deities, Jupiter, Mars, Bellona, Neptune, are of
course commemorated, though in a somewhat perfunctory fashion; and
the official divinity of the emperors, living and dead, is duly recognised.
But we have also a number of altars to gods bearing uncouth Celtic
names: Belatucader, Anociticus, Cocidius and the like, plainly showing
22
that the Roman soldiers, like the Assyrian settlers in Palestine, wished
to keep on good terms with the gods of the land. Even more conspicuous
is the devotion of the Roman soldiers to “the unconquered Mithras”. The
strange Oriental cult called Mithraism, probably a form of sun-worship,
spread rapidly through the Roman empire in the second and third
centuries, and seemed likely at one time to be a successful rival to
Christianity. It is marvellous to see in the palace of the Roman emperors
at Ostia a chapel with all the emblems of Mithraic worship, and then to
find the remains of a similar chapel with precisely similar emblems,
though broken and mutilated, on the bare hillside of Housesteads in
Northumberland. The favourite symbol of this strange dead religion is a
young man, crowned with a tiara, bestriding a bull, into whose side he is
driving deep a short sword or dagger. Whatever this curious bas-relief
may represent—and some have seen in it a symbol of the sun, the
unconquered hero entering the constellation Taurus—it was no doubt
faithfully reproduced in that little chapel on our northern moorlands, and
it is perfectly figured on a small marble tablet lately discovered under the
pavement of a London street while the workmen were repairing a sewer.
Thus, of so many strange pagan superstitions we have abundant
vestiges, but of Christianity in Roman Britain we have singularly few
traces. It is true that here and there among undoubtedly Roman remains
the Christian monogram (X P) or Christian formulæ such as Vivas in Deo
23
or Spes in Deo have been met with. In the recent excavations at
Silchester a small building which is almost certainly a Christian basilica
has also been discovered, but these are slight evidences for the existence
of a faith which was certainly professed by multitudes ere the legions
quitted Britain. As to the actual date of the introduction of Christianity
into our island we must be contented to confess our ignorance. The story
contained in the book of Papal Lives, which was reproduced by Bede,
that a certain King Lucius of Britain, about the year 180, sent over to
Pope Eleutherus, asking for missionaries to instruct his people in the
Christian faith, must be dismissed as the fable of a later age; nor can we
speak with much certainty concerning the so-called proto-martyr, St.
Alban, who is said to have suffered for the faith in the persecution of
Diocletian. There can be no doubt, however, that there were some
converts to Christianity in Britain during the second century, and in the
third century it must have become the dominant religion here as in the
rest of the empire. Towards the end of that century our island, which
produced so many rival Cæsars, produced also one of the most famous of
heretics, Pelagius, and, of course, the existence of his heterodoxy implies
also the existence of the orthodoxy out of which it sprang. Thus, though
we cannot help sometimes relying on the “argument from silence,” the
present condition of our archæological information concerning the
existence of Christianity in Roman Britain shows us how untrustworthy
may sometimes be that very argument.
3. It is, however, partly in reliance on such negative evidence that
we venture to assert that the Roman occupation of Britain was before all
things a military occupation, and that they either did not attempt, or did
not succeed in the attempt, largely to win over the inhabitants to their
own ways and to accustom them to that civic life which had been the
cradle of their own civilisation. In Italy itself, in Gaul and in most of the
provinces of western Europe we find abundant evidence of the
municipalisation of the conquered tribes. “Decurio” and “Duumvir,”
which we may represent by town councillor and mayor, are indications
of rank which we meet with continually on provincial tombstones in
those countries; but in Britain amid the crowd of inscriptions to
centurions, tribunes and other military officers who served here we meet
with only one here and there to civic dignitaries. “The highest form of
town life known to the Romans was naturally rare in Britain. The
coloniæ and municipia, the privileged municipalities, with institutions on
the Italian model, which mark the supreme development of Roman
political civilisation in the provinces, were not common in Britain. We
know only of five: Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, and York were
coloniæ, Verulam probably a municipium, and despite their legal rank
none of these could count among the greater cities of the empire. Four of
them, indeed, probably owed their existence not to any development of
Britain but to the need of providing for time-expired soldiers discharged
24
from the army.” There was, of course, a certain number of towns such
as Londinium which had sprung out of pre-Roman settlements, some of
which no doubt grew and prospered exceedingly with the growth of
commerce due to the prevalence of “the Roman peace,” but these towns
were apparently not modelled on the Roman pattern, and what may have
been the nature of their institutions can only be a matter of conjecture.
It seems probable that the prevailing type of social organisation
during the Roman period was the villa or great estate owned by a Roman
proprietor and dotted over with the cottages of British serfs or slaves,
whose labour was directed for his lord’s benefit by a villicus or farm
bailiff, sometimes himself a slave. Whether or no this system lasted on to
any great extent after the Saxon invasion (the barbarian invader seating
himself in the place of power and claiming all his ousted predecessor’s
rights), and whether it thus passed in the course of centuries into the
feudal manor, is one of the most interesting questions now debated by
our archæologists. Mr. Seebohm is the most conspicuous advocate of this
Roman-villa theory, which cuts right across the theories of Kemble and
Freeman, who held that the Teutonic invaders brought with them to our
island and everywhere established a system of free but co-operative land-
ownership, resembling that described in the Germania of Tacitus. The
discussion, as has been said, is one of great interest to all who desire to
get below the surface in the history of the past ages of Britain, but many
positions will probably be won and lost before the battle is finally
decided.
 The same may be said of the larger question, how far the influence
exerted by our Roman conquerors during the four centuries of their stay
lasted on after the departure of the legions. That Britain was not
assimilated as Gaul was, is admitted by all, the mere fact that Welsh is
not, like French, an offshoot from Latin, being in itself a sufficient proof
of the difference between the two conquests; but why the Romanisation
of Britain was so much less thorough; how far it did after all extend; and
what influences modified or destroyed it; these are all questions still
unsolved, to which, however, we may, perhaps, some day get an answer
from a more thorough and scientific study of Celtic literature, and of
Romano-British antiquities.
 CHAPTER VI.

THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST.

W the departure of the Roman legions from Britain we enter upon a
period of even denser darkness than those which we have been lately
traversing, nor is the veil lifted till by the mission of St. Augustine (596)
our island is again brought into the family of the Christian nations of
Europe. The two centuries during which the voice of authentic history is
thus silent, from 407 to 596, were the period of the fall of the Roman
empire in the west and the establishment in its stead of the great Teutonic
kingdoms, Frankish, Burgundian, Visigothic, from which the states of
modern Europe are descended.
Owing to the extremely imperfect character of our information
concerning the Anglo-Saxon conquest, which was for us the chief event of
these two centuries, and the fact that scarcely any of it is contemporary,
some of it obviously legendary and fabulous, it is impossible to speak with
any confidence as to its details. Almost every date may be challenged:
“probably” or “to the best of our knowledge” are qualifying clauses which
should be prefixed to almost every statement. It may be well, however, first
to set forth in broad outlines the main facts which are beyond the reach of
controversy. No one doubts that about the middle of the fifth century, if not
before, the Romano-Celtic inhabitants of Britain were invaded by Teutonic
tribes from the shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic. The tribes
chiefly concerned in the invasion were the Saxons and the Angles, but the
smaller nation of the Jutes are said to have been the first to undertake a
definite scheme of conquest, and it is asserted with much positiveness that
they came at first as auxiliaries to help the Britons against the Picts of
Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland, who were ravaging the undefended
land. To the Jutes is attributed the foundation of the kingdom of Kent and a
settlement in the Isle of Wight. The far more numerous Saxons who
followed them established the two kingdoms of the South Saxons and East
Saxons, which are represented by the modern counties of Sussex and Essex;
and after the lapse of two generations the West Saxons, invading
Hampshire, laid there the foundation of the great kingdom of Wessex,
which gradually included almost all the country south of the Thames. Their
kings eventually became lords of the whole of Britain, and were ancestors
through females of the sovereign who now sits upon the throne. The
Angles, who were apparently the latest comers of all, founded the kingdoms
of East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk), Mercia (the midland counties), Deira
(Yorkshire), and Bernicia (Durham, Northumberland, and East Scotland as
far as the Firth of Forth).
A few words must be said as to the ethnological relations of these three
tribes. It is not disputed that they all belonged to the great Low German
family of nations, to which the Goths probably belonged and from which
the Dutch and most of the inhabitants of northern Germany are descended.
As to the little nation of the Jutes we require further information. They were
once said to be identical with the Goths, and more recently they have been
connected with the inhabitants of Jutland. The first identification is
25
certainly wrong, the second, for philological reasons, is doubtful. It seems
26
that at present the question must be left in suspense.
The Saxons were placed by the geographer, Ptolemy (who wrote early
in the second century), in the country now known as Holstein, but in the
fourth century the name seems to have been applied to a much wider range
of people. The Saxons with whom Charlemagne waged his stubborn wars at
the close of the eighth century, inhabited the whole of Westphalia, Hanover
and Brunswick and other lands beside. From any part of that country our
Saxon ancestors may have come.
Of the Angles, who in the first century after Christ were living on the
right bank of the Elbe, near its mouth, Tacitus gives us an interesting
account. He tells us that they, together with the kindred tribes between Elbe
and Oder, worshipped the great goddess Nerthus, whose image, ordinarily
kept in the dark recesses of a sacred island, at certain seasons paraded the
lands of her votaries in a chariot drawn by kine. Wherever the image of the
goddess came, mirth reigned and war ceased; but when her pilgrimage was
ended, the image and the chariot, returning to the dark island, were washed
in a sacred lake, beneath whose waters all the slaves who had taken part in
the ceremony were at once engulfed, in order to ensure their silence as to
the mysteries which they had beheld. A more interesting fact for us is the
close relation which, according to Tacitus, existed between the Angli and
the Longobardi, the tribe by whom, after long wanderings through central
Europe, the conquest of Italy was at last achieved in 568, possibly at the
very time when some of their old Anglian neighbours were beginning to fit
out their barks for the invasion of England. This ethnological connexion is
confirmed by the similarity of names to be found among the two nations, a
similarity which is but slightly veiled by the changes which in the course of
five centuries turned the Lombards from a people speaking Low German to
one with a High German language. Thus the Adelperga of the Lombards
corresponds to the Ethelberga of the Anglo-Saxons; Sisibert to Sigeberht,
Alipert to Alberht, Rotopert to Rodberht, Adelbert to Ethelberht, and
Audoin to Edwin. Moreover, the great historian of the Lombards, Paulus
Diaconus, who wrote towards the end of the eighth century, tells us that
their queen, Theodelinda, adorned her palace at Pavia with pictures
representing the Lombard invaders of Italy in the very garb which they then
wore, and which had become antiquated in the two centuries that had
elapsed before his own time. “Their garments,” he says, “were loose and for
the most part made of linen, such as the Anglo-Saxons are wont to wear,
adorned with wide borders woven in various colours.” This is a valuable
note of costume, for its own sake, and a striking confirmation of the close
relationship once existing between the ancestors of two great nations now
joined in friendly alliance.

* * * * *
After this sketch of the antecedents of the three new actors on the stage
of British history, it remains for us to examine the evidence—the slender
evidence, as has been already said—as to their proceedings during the
conquest. It will be well to consider this evidence under three heads:—
(1) The slight notices contained in the works of contemporary or nearly
contemporary Latin authors.
(2) The story of the conquest as given to us by the descendants of the
invaders, that is, especially by Bede and the authors of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle.
(3) The same story as told by the descendants of the conquered, that is,
especially by Gildas and Nennius.
1. In the fifth century the writing of history in the Roman empire had
practically dwindled down to the composition of short books of chronicles,
generally by ecclesiastics. As literary compositions they have no merit: they
are generally very short, giving only three or four lines to each year, and
they have no sense of the proportionate importance of the events which they
record. But they give us for the most part absolutely contemporary
evidence, and the historian, therefore, accepts them gratefully, with all their
defects. One such chronicle, by no means the best of its kind, is generally
known by the name of Prosper Tiro (a friend and correspondent of St.
Augustine), though it is certain that it was not written by him but by some
ecclesiastic of the period, with semi-Pelagian views. This dull and second-
rate writer gives us the two following precious entries, the only
contemporary evidence that we possess as to the Saxon invasions: “The
fifteenth year of Arcadius and Honorius [ . . 409]: at this time the strength
of the Romans was utterly wasted by sickness; and the provinces of Britain
were laid waste by the incursion of the Saxons”. “The eighteenth year of
Theodosius II. [ . . 441]: the provinces of Britain which up to this time had
been torn by various slaughters and disasters, are brought under the
dominion of the Saxons.”
There are two points in these entries to which the reader’s attention
should be particularly directed: the first, that the Saxon invasions are
represented as beginning in 409, almost immediately after the departure of
the usurper Constantine with the legions; the second, that the subjugation of
Britain by the Saxons is assigned by the chronicler to 441, not 449, the date
usually current on the authority of Bede. It should be remarked, in passing,
that if the chronicler supposed that the whole of Roman Britain (which he
calls Britanniæ, in the plural) came under the dominion of the Saxons (or
Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) in that year, he was certainly mistaken. But
some important stage in the conquest, if we may trust this, our only
contemporary authority, was evidently reached in the year 441, and it was
the climax of a series of aggressions which had apparently been going on
for thirty-two years.
It should be mentioned that one other nearly contemporary authority,
the Greek historian Zosimus, alludes to the collapse of Roman rule in
Britain, which he attributes to a revolt of the natives, following on the
departure of the usurper Constantine with the legions. His language,
however, is obscure and even self-contradictory, and he throws little light
on the situation.
The authority which we have next to consider is the Life of St.
Germanus, written by the presbyter Constantius about the year 480. It will
be seen that this document is not strictly contemporary, the writer being
separated by an interval of about half a century from the chief events
recorded by him: and, moreover, there is throughout the Life a tendency to
glorify the saint by attributing to him various manifestations of a
miraculous or semi-miraculous kind, which does not increase our
confidence in his trustworthiness as a historian. But all students of early
medieval history are accustomed to this kind of document, in which every
remarkable event in the life of the subject of the biography is invested with
a halo of thaumaturgic sanctity, and though they are not the sort of historic
materials which we prefer, we must accept them (while making our own
private reservations as to the amount of faith which we repose in all their
details) or give up writing the story of the Middle Ages altogether.
 In the case before us, the missionary Germanus, whose adventures in
Britain are related by the biographer, was a great and well-known historical
personage. He had held, under the empire, the high military dignity of duke
of the Armorican shore (Normandy and Brittany), had been consecrated
Bishop of Auxerre against his will, had thereupon said farewell to the
delights of sportsmanship, and entered earnestly on the duties of his new
calling. He had as a fellow-missionary, Lupus, who many years after, as
Bishop of Troyes, earned great renown by dissuading the savage warrior,
Attila, from an attack on his cathedral city. It is a striking testimony to the
character of both men that their contemporary, Apollinaris Sidonius, when
he wishes to celebrate the virtues of another eminent prelate, Anianus,
Bishop of Orleans, can find no higher term of praise than this: “He was
equal to Lupus and not unequal to Germanus”. Such were the two men who
in the year 429 were sent at the bidding of Pope Celestine, and in
conformity with the resolutions of a synod of Gaulish bishops, “to purge the
minds of the people of Britain from the Pelagian heresy and bring them
back to the Catholic faith,” that is, to the Augustinian teaching on free-will
and the Divine grace. Their zealous preaching won over the multitude to
their side, but the Pelagians, who seem to have been found chiefly among
the wealthier Britons, challenged them to a public discussion, in which their
simple earnestness prevailed over the elaborate rhetoric of the gaily clothed
orators on the other side. A miracle followed: the restoration of sight to a
little girl of ten years old, the daughter of “a certain man of tribunician
rank”. After visiting the tomb of the martyred Saint Alban and exchanging
relics with the keepers of the shrine, they resumed their journey, but,
unfortunately, Germanus was for several days confined by a sprained ankle
to a humble cottage in the country. The cottage itself and all the little hovels
round it were thatched with reeds from the marsh, and fire having broken
out in the little settlement, the saint’s life seemed to be in jeopardy, but he
refused to stir, and his cottage alone remained unconsumed.
Then followed the celebrated incident of the Hallelujah battle which is
the chief reason for referring to the mission. The scene of the encounter is
not made known to us, but it evidently took place in a mountainous country,
27
possibly in Wales. The first sentence of the biographer, describing the
campaign, is so important that it must be translated literally: “In the
meanwhile the Saxons and the Picts, driven into one camp by the same
necessity, with conjoined force undertook war against the Britons, and,
when the latter deemed their strength unequal to the contest, they sought the
aid of the holy bishops, who, hastening their arrival, brought with them
such an accession of confidence as was equivalent to a mighty host”. The
biographer then describes the baptism of the larger part of the army on
Easter day; their eagerness for battle while they were still moist with the
baptismal water; the choice of the battle-field by the veteran officer
Germanus; that battle-field a valley surrounded by mountains; the placing
of an ambuscade whose duty it was to signal to him the approach of the foe.
At the signal given the bishops gave the word “Hallelujah,” which was
repeated in a tremendous shout by the multitudes carefully posted out of
sight, and was repeated from peak to peak of the surrounding mountains.
Hereat the terror-stricken foes imagined not only rocks hurled down upon
them, but the very artillery of heaven let loose for their destruction. Casting
away their arms they fled in all directions, and the larger number of them
were swallowed up in the river which they had just crossed; the Hallelujah
victory was complete, a victory like that of Gideon over the Midianites,
won by moral means alone.
This narrative when we remember its nearly contemporary character
has an important bearing on the history of Britain in the fifth century. It
seems to show that, twenty years after the withdrawal of the legions, the
condition of the Britons was not absolutely desperate. There were still
among them wealthy men and eloquent ecclesiastics dressed in costly
garments, and the people were not too much engrossed by the mere struggle
for existence to have leisure to listen to the elaborate arguments about
original sin, free will and assisting grace which formed the staple of the
Pelagian controversy. Moreover the union of the Saxons with the Picts in
the hostile army is surely a point of no small importance. If we connect it
with the previously quoted entry of Tiro, assigning to the year 409 the
beginning of a series of Saxon devastations, we may suspect that the
commonly received story which attributes the Teutonic invasions entirely to
the folly of the Britons who called in the Saxons to help them against the
Picts, is, if not altogether false, at any rate an exaggeration of one not very
important incident in the contest.

* * * * *
2. For the story told by the invaders, our chief authorities are Bede and
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. (a) It must be confessed that for this part of the
history we do not get much assistance from the monk of Jarrow, the
Venerable Bede. He was probably the most learned man of his time in
Europe; his conception of the duty of a historian is a high and noble one,
and when we reach the seventh century, the golden age of Northumbrian
Christianity, we shall find his assistance invaluable; but, writing as he did in
731, he was separated by nearly three centuries from the great Saxon
invasions, and it seems clear that he had little or nothing derived from the
genuine traditions of his race to say concerning them. The first book of his
Ecclesiastical History is therefore little more than a mosaic of passages
from Orosius, Eutropius, and, pre-eminently, the Briton Gildas (hereafter to
be described), from whom he derives almost the whole history of the
Caledonian invasion, and of the calling in of the Saxons as defenders
against the attacks of the Picts. It is, however, to Bede that we owe the first
mention of the British king Vortigern as well as of the names of Hengest
and Horsa. It must remain an unsolved question from what source Bede
derived the name of Vortigern, the inviter of the Saxons into Britain. Gildas,
who is his main authority for this part of the story, while hinting at the
personality of Vortigern, hides his name. After describing the three invading
nations, the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles, Bede continues: “Their
generals” (according to strict grammatical construction this should refer not
to the Jutes but to the Angles) “are said to have been two brothers, Hengest
and Horsa, of whom Horsa was afterwards slain in war by the Britons. To
this day a monument inscribed by his name exists in the eastern parts of
Kent. These two were sons of Wictgils, the son of Witta, the son of Wecta,
the son of Woden, from whose stock the royal families of many provinces
derived their origin.” Bede then goes on to describe how the bands of the
three nations already named began to pour into the island, how they made a
treaty with the Picts whom they had previously conquered and driven far
away, and how they then turned their arms against their British allies. From
this point he merely copies Gildas, describing in lamentable tones the
ravage wrought by his countrymen. It is pointed out by Bede’s latest editor,
Plummer, that such information as the Northumbrian monk possessed
concerning Kent would be naturally derived by him from his Kentish
friends, Albinus, abbot of Canterbury, and Nothelm, priest of the church of
London, to both of whom he expressly refers in his preface. But apparently
even their traditions could not carry him very far. Save for such information
as the conquered race could supply, Bede’s mind was little more than a
blank as to events in England between the ages of Honorius and Gregory
the Great.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the great historical monument of our
race in its youthful days, and probably owes its original inception to the
wise encouragement of Alfred. As that great prince ruled in the later years
of the ninth century it is plain that the interval between the historian and the
events recorded is even greater in the case of the Chronicle than in that of
Bede. To a considerable extent the early annals in the Chronicle are founded
upon Bede’s history, and so far we may safely neglect them since they add
nothing to the evidence already before the court; but there is also a certain
amount of information, especially relating to the kingdom of Wessex, to
which we find nothing that corresponds in Bede; and this part of the
Chronicle—whatever it may be worth—must of course be treated as a
primary authority. What is the real historical value of the statements which
we find in it concerning yet heathen England? There is evidently in them
some admixture of the fabulous. When we find, as we shall do, a Saxon
chieftain, Port, described as the founder of Portsmouth, the Portus Magnus
of the Romans, and Wihtgar made the name-giver to the Isle of Wight,
which had been known as Vectis for centuries before he was born, we feel
that we are in the presence of traditions, not genuine but manufactured out
of etymology. Moreover the dates so elaborately given by the Chronicle
seem to have been arranged (as was pointed out by Lappenberg) on an
artificial system with recurring periods of eight and four years; which looks
like the work of men with slender materials trying to make the bricks of
history without the straw of genuine chronology. There is a good deal of
distrust of the earlier portions of the Chronicle in the minds of historical
students, side by side with a high appreciation of its general fairness, and
gratitude to the scribes who have preserved for us so much of the records of
the past, even though their narrative is often somewhat arid. On the whole it
seems the wisest, in fact the only possible course, to take thankfully the
information which the Chronicle gives us as to these two mist-enshrouded
centuries, not absolutely maintaining its accuracy in every particular, but
yielding to it a provisional assent, until either by internal or external
evidence it shall be proved to be legendary or impossible.
It may be as well to state here that there are various manuscripts of the
Chronicle hailing from different ecclesiastical centres, the divergences of
which in the later centuries of Anglo-Saxon history are sometimes of great
importance. For the present, however, this question does not arise. Save for
a few not very important Northumbrian interpolations, the manuscripts of
the Chronicle may be considered as one, and their source of origin may be
considered to have been Winchester, the focus of all West Saxon
government and culture.
The allusions made in the Chronicle to the departure of the Romans
from Britain are naturally very scanty: “In 409 the Goths broke up the city
of Rome, and never after that did the Romans rule in Britain”. “In 418 the
Romans gathered together all the gold-hoards that were in Britain and hid
some in the earth, so that no man thenceforth should ever find them, and
some they took with them into Gaul.” Let us proceed therefore to examine
the evidence furnished from this source as to the foundation of the
kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, and Northumbria. As to the early
history of East Anglia, Essex and Mercia the Chronicle is altogether silent.
 28
Kent.— . . 449. Wyrtgeorn [Vortigern] invites the Angles to Britain.
They come over in three “keels” and land at Heopwines-fleet [Ebbs-fleet in
the Isle of Thanet], and he gives them lands in the south-east of the country
on condition of their fighting the Picts. This they do successfully, but they
send home for more of their countrymen, telling them of the worthlessness
of the Britons and the goodness of the land. Their generals were two
brothers, Hengest and Horsa, sons of Wictgils with the pedigree as given by
Bede.
. . 455. Hengest and Horsa fight with Vortigern at Aegeles-threp
[Aylesford on the Medway]. Horsa is slain. Hengest assumes the title of
king, and associates with himself his son Aesc.
. . 456. Hengest and Aesc fight with the Britons at Crecgan-ford
[Crayford, about six miles south-east of Woolwich], and slay 4,000 of them.
The Britons evacuate Kent and with much fear flee to London-borough.
. . 465. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen” [Britons] near
Wippedes-fleote, and there slay twelve Welsh nobles, themselves losing one
thane, whose name was Wipped.
. . 473. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen,” and take booty
past counting. The Welsh flee “as a man fleeth fire”.
That is all the information vouchsafed us as to the conquest of Kent,
which was evidently not an easy matter, taking as it did nearly thirty years
to finish. Possibly ere the strife was ended the invaders somewhat modified
their views as to the military worthlessness of the Britons. London, which is
transiently mentioned here in the annal for 456 is not mentioned again in
the Chronicle till 851. We hear of it, however, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History in 604. The history of Kent is a blank from the year 473 till 565
when Ethelbert, who afterwards embraced Christianity, began his long reign
of fifty-three years.
Sussex.—We know from other sources that, far on into the Middle
Ages, Sussex was divided from Kent by the dense forest of the
Andredesweald or Andredesleag, and accordingly the conquest of one
country by no means necessitated the conquest of the other, which is
assigned to a considerably later date than that given for the landing of
Hengest and Horsa.
. . 477. Aelle with three sons and three keels come to the place called
Cymenes ora. He slays many “Welshmen,” and drives others to take refuge
in the wood that is called Andredesleag.
. . 485. He fights with “Welshmen” near Mearcredesburn.
 . . 491. “Aelle and Cissa begirt Andredesceaster and slay all who
dwell therein, nor was there for that reason one Briton left alive.”
This wholesale butchery of the British defenders of the Roman fortress
of Anderida, overlooking Pevensey Bay, has naturally attracted much
attention, and is constantly appealed to by those who maintain that the
earlier stages of the Saxon conquest were an absolute war of extermination.
It is to be observed that Aelle, who founded an exceptionally short-lived
dynasty, is not credited with any long line of ancestors reaching back to the
mythic Woden. Chichester, capital of the South Saxon kingdom, founded
probably on the site of the Roman city of Regnum, is said to have derived
its name from Cissa, son of Aelle.
Wessex.—As might naturally be expected in a chronicle having its
birth-place in Winchester, the historical details as to Wessex are much fuller
than for the other kingdoms; so full that it is possible to relinquish the mere
annalistic form and to weave them into a continuous narrative. In 495 (more
than half a century after Tiro’s date of the Saxon conquest) two chieftains,
Cerdic and Cynric his son, came with five ships to a place called Cerdices
ora, and on the very day of their landing fought a battle with the
“Welshmen”. The scene of the landing was probably somewhere in the
noble harbour of Southampton Water. The two chieftains were not as yet
spoken of as kings, but bore the lower title of ealdormen. Of Cerdic,
however, the Chronicle recites the usual half-legendary pedigree, reaching
back through eight intervening links to Woden, from whom (of course
under later Christian influences) the line is traced back to Noah and Adam.
These pedigrees, or at least the genuine Teutonic portion of them, may very
probably have been preserved in the songs of minstrels, and obviously
belong to that element of the Chronicle which is independent of Bede. We
may look upon the divine ancestor Woden as marking the limit of the
minstrel’s memory or knowledge, and we shall therefore probably be
justified in concluding that the West Saxon tribe possessed some sort of
continuous historical tradition reaching back for eight generations behind
Cerdic (himself a middle-aged man in 495), or about to the beginning of the
third century. No wonder that kings whose very flatterers could not trace
back their lineage to an earlier date than that of the Emperor Severus, felt
their dynasties new and short-lived in presence of the immemorial antiquity
of Rome.
In 508, the two chiefs slew a British king named Natanleod and 5,000
men with him. Evidently by this time they must have been at the head of a
large number of followers. We are told that “the land”—apparently the
scene of the battle—was named after the slain king; and it is generally
supposed that this gives us the origin of the name Netley, well known for its
ruined abbey and its military hospital. Eleven years later (in 519) they
assumed the title of kings, being no longer contented with the humbler
designation of ealdormen, and fought the Britons at Cerdicesford, a place
identified with Charford on the Avon, about six miles south of Salisbury.
Meanwhile, however, there had been other Saxon invasions of the same
region. In 501 is placed the visit of the legendary Port with his two sons to
Portsmouth, and the death of a young Briton of very high birth who vainly
tried to defend his land from their invasion. In 514 certain West Saxon
reinforcements are represented as arriving (perhaps in the Isle of Wight)
under the leadership of another eponymous hero, Wihtgar, and his brother
Stuf, nephews of Cerdic; and, probably with their help, in 530 Cerdic and
Cynric took possession of the Isle of Wight, after slaying many Britons at
Wihtgaræsbyrg or Carisbrooke. The statements in the Chronicle about the
conquest of the Isle of Wight, obscure and confused in themselves, become
yet more so when we compare them with an earlier passage interpolated
from Bede, in which the Jutes, not the West Saxons, are represented as the
conquerors of the Isle of Wight. Of course two tides of Teutonic conquest
may have passed over the island, but it is difficult to bring the two lines of
tradition into their proper relation to one another.
In 534, Cerdic, who must now have been an old man, ended his life and
his near forty years of British warfare, and Cynric his son reigned alone. We
may sum up the total of Cerdic’s achievements by saying that he seems to
have completed the conquest of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and that
he probably fixed his royal residence at the Romano-British city of Venta
Belgarum, thereafter to be known as Winchester. The fact that it required
the labour of a lifetime to achieve the conquest of a moderate-sized English
county, sufficiently shows that the Britons were not the mere Nithings (men
of naught) whom Hengest and some of Hengest’s Teutonic countrymen
have represented them to have been.
Of the reign of Cynric, which, according to the Chronicle, lasted from
534 to 560, we have but little told us in that work. We hear of a battle at Old
Sarum in 552 and of another four years later at Beranbyrig which is
identified with Barbury in the north of Wiltshire. Apparently the
achievement of his reign was the addition of the greater part of Wiltshire to
the West Saxon kingdom. We may so far anticipate the evidence of the
British writers as to say that the twenty-six years of Cynric probably
coincide with part of the forty-four years of comparative peace which they
describe as following the British victory of Mount Badon.
 Far fuller of decisive events was the memorable reign of Ceawlin, son
of Cynric, which is assigned to the years between 560 and 592. He was the
eldest of a gallant band of brothers whose mutually resembling names,
Cutha and Cuthwine and Ceol and Ceolric, have given no small trouble to
the genealogists. The eighth year of his reign was signalised by an event,
unprecedented as far as we know in the history of Anglo-Saxon England,
namely, war between the invaders themselves. The object of the West
Saxon attack in 568 was Kent, whose young king Ethelbert, after but three
years of kingship, saw his land invaded by Ceawlin and his brother Cutha.
The battle-place was Wibbandune, possibly Wimbledon in Surrey, and there
two of Ethelbert’s ealdormen were slain and himself put to flight. What
terms he may have made with the victors we know not, but he was not
permanently dethroned, since twenty-eight years afterwards we find him
welcoming to his palace in Canterbury the missionaries from Rome.
Three years later (571) a vigorous attack was made by Cutha on the
Britons, north of the Thames. A battle was fought at Bedford in which
Cutha himself was slain, but victory crowned the Saxon arms in the general
campaign, and four towns in Oxfordshire and Bucks (of which Aylesbury
alone has retained its importance till the present day) were added to the
kingdom of Wessex. The year 577 was of immense importance in the
history of the Saxon progress. In that year a great battle was fought at
Deorham, in Gloucestershire, about ten miles east of Bristol. There were
arrayed on the one side Ceawlin and his brother Cuthwine, on the other
three British kings, Coinmail and Condidan and Farinmail, all of whom
were slain. Three great cities of Roman foundation (“ceastra” as the
Chronicle calls them) were the price of victory: they were Gloucester,
Cirencester and Bathanceaster or Bath. All historians are agreed as to the
importance of this victory, which not only added Gloucester and (probably)
part of Somerset to the West-Saxon kingdom, but by cutting off the Cymry
of “West Wales” (Devon and Cornwall) from their brethren north of the
Bristol Channel practically ensured their eventual if slow submission.
“In 584 Ceawlin and Cutha fought with the Britons in the place that is
29
called Fethan-lea, and Cutha was slain, and Ceawlin took many ‘towns’
and innumerable quantities of booty and departed in anger to his own land.”
The chronicler seems to be here telling us of a Saxon reverse. Though
Ceawlin captured many towns and took vast heaps of spoil he lost his son in
the great battle and departed in wrath, assuredly in effect defeated, to his
own land. After defeat came apparently domestic treason and civil broils.
The entries for 591 to 593 show us the proclamation of a certain Ceolric,
brother or nephew of Ceawlin, and a battle in 592 evidently not with the
 30
Britons, but between Saxon and Saxon, fought at Wodnesbeorge, which
resulted in the “driving out” of Ceawlin. Next year (593) Ceawlin with two
others, probably princes of his house, named Cuichelm and Crida
31
“perished”. The wording of the annal shows pretty plainly that they all
died a violent death, whether on the battlefield or by assassination, whether
as friends or foes, it is impossible to say; but there can be no doubt that the
sun of Ceawlin’s fortunes, which had at one time shone so splendidly, set in
clouds and storms.
In 597 (apparently on the death of Ceolric) Ceolwulf, nephew of
Ceawlin, “began to reign over the West Saxons, and he fought continually
and successfully either with Englishmen or with Welshmen or with Picts or
with Scots”. He was, however, reigning at the time of Augustine’s mission,
and with that event the historical interest which has been slightly stirred by
the story of the West Saxons’ advance is transferred to another quarter.
Throughout the seventh century Kent and Mercia and pre-eminently
Northumbria claim our attention so absorbingly that we cannot spare much
thought for the obscure annals of Wessex.
Concerning the two Northumbrian kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, we
have no information in the Chronicle for the first hundred years after the
landing of Hengest and Horsa. We are then under the year told that Ida
(descended in the ninth generation from Woden) was the founder of the
royal line of Northumbria; that he built Bebbanburh (Bamburgh) and that
this celebrated fortress was in the first instance surrounded with a fence and
afterwards with a wall. The chronicler then tells us that in 560, on the death
of Ida, Aelle (eleventh in descent from Woden) began to reign over
Northumbria and reigned for [nearly] thirty years. The chronicler here
either wilfully or inadvertently has suppressed something of the truth. From
his language one might have conjectured that Aelle was of the lineage of
Ida, and had succeeded peaceably to his ancestor. Instead of this peaceable
succession, however, we know from other sources that we have here to deal
with two rival kingly lines, whose feuds and reconciliations make an
important chapter in Northumbrian history. The true situation was this:
essentially the kings of Ida’s line were rulers of Bernicia, while Aelle and
his descendants ruled Deira. That is to say: from their steep rock-palace of
Bamburgh the sons of Ida reigned by ancestral right over all the eastern
portion of the lands between Tyne and Forth, between the wall of Hadrian
and the wall of Antoninus. Similarly Aelle and his sons, firmly settled in the
great Roman city of Eburacum, governed the country between Tyne and
Humber; but each king ever aspired to extend his sway over the other
kingdom and often succeeded for a while in doing so. Thus we have
constant vicissitudes but a general tendency towards the union of the two
kingdoms into one Northumbria, which obeys now an “Iding,” now an
“Aelling” ruler. What strifes and commotions may have attended the
transition from one line to another we can only in part discern. We are only
obscurely told that in 588 Aelle’s line was ousted, and that Ethelric the son,
and after him Ethelfrith the grandson of Ida reigned over all Northumbria.

* * * * *
3. We now come to the British version of the conquest. Though a nation
is naturally reluctant to tell the story of its own defeat, we might have
expected to receive from a comparatively civilised and Christianised
people, such as the Romano-Britons of the fifth century, some intelligible
literary history of so important an event as the Teutonic conquest of their
island. This expectation, however, is dismally disappointed. We have
practically nothing from the vanquished people, but the lamentations of the
sixth century author Gildas, and the obviously fable-tainted narratives of the
puzzle-headed Nennius of the eighth century.
Gildas, who obtained from after ages the surname of “the Wise,” seems
to have been a native of Scottish Strathclyde and was born early in the sixth
century; he became a monk and at the age of forty-four wrote what Bede
truly calls “a tearful discourse concerning the ruin of Britain”. His object in
this discourse was to rebuke the ungodliness of his countrymen and to
remind them of the tokens of the Divine wrath which they had already
received. He is consequently, for our purpose, a most disappointing writer.
We go to him for history and we get a sermon, but we ought in fairness to
remember that he never proposed to give us anything else. A large part of
his treatise consists of reproductions of the denunciatory passages of the old
Hebrew prophets: a more interesting section, but one outside our present
purpose, consists of fierce invectives against five wicked, or at least
unfriendly, kings of Wales. But there are a few chapters, the only ones that
now concern us, in which, in pathetic tones, he tells us something as to the
circumstances of the invasion of his country. He harks back to the departure
from Britain of the usurper Maximus (383), to which, rather than to the later
usurpation of Constantine, he traces her defenceless condition. Stripped of
the multitude of brave young men who followed the fortunes of Maximus
and never returned, and being themselves ignorant of war, the Britons were
“trampled under foot by two savage nations from beyond seas, namely the
Scots from the north-west and the Picts from the north”. The description of
the invaders as coming from beyond the seas is important. The term “Scots”
at this time and for four centuries afterwards means primarily the
inhabitants of the north of Ireland, and only secondarily the offshoot from
that race who settled in Argyll and the Isles. These invaders, of course, were
as Gildas calls them “transmarini”: but it is possible that the Picts also,
some of whom we know to have been settled in Wigtonshire, came across
the shallow land-girdled waters of Solway Firth, instead of attacking the yet
undemolished wall, and thus that they too seemed to the dwellers in North-
west Britain to be coming from “beyond the seas”.
According to Gildas the Britons sent an embassy to Rome, piteously
imploring help against the invaders. The Romans came, drove out the
barbarians and exhorted the inhabitants to build a wall between the two
seas, which they accordingly did, from Forth to Clyde, building it only of
turf. A fresh invasion followed, a second embassy, again utter rout and
slaughter of the enemy, but, alas! there came also a solemn warning from
the Romans that they could not wear out their strength in these constant
expeditions for the deliverance of Britain, and that its inhabitants must
henceforth look to their own right arms for safety; but nevertheless before
they abandoned them they would help them to build a wall, this time of
stone not of turf, on the line between Tyne and Solway. Moreover, they
built a line of towers along the coast right down to the southern shore where
their ships were wont to be stationed, and then they said farewell to their
allies, as men who expected never to see them again.
All this part of Gildas’s story is quite untrustworthy. No one who has
carefully studied the architecture of the two walls and the inscriptions along
their course will attribute their origin or even any important restorations of
them, to those troublous years of dying Rome, the years between 390 and
440. Gildas is here evidently retailing the legend which had sprung up
among an ignorant and half-barbarised people as to the great works of the
foreigner in their land, and he has not only in this matter “darkened counsel
by words without knowledge,” but he has grievously misled his worthy
follower Bede, who is brought into hopeless perplexity by his attempt to
reconcile his own more correct information about the Roman walls with the
unsound Welsh traditions or conjectures which he found in Gildas. The
tearful narrative proceeds: There is more misery in Britain: civil war is
added to barbarian invasion, and food, save such as can be procured by
hunting, vanishes out of the land. In 446 the poor remnants of the Britons
send their celebrated letter to that Roman general whose name was at the
32
time most famous among men: the letter which began, “To Aetius, thrice
consul, the groans of the Britons,” and went on to say, “The barbarians
drive us to the sea: the sea drives us back on the barbarians: we have but a
choice between two modes of dying, either to have our throats cut or to be
drowned”. But not even this piteous request brought help, for Aetius was
too busily occupied with his wars against Attila and the Huns to be able to
spare thought or men for the defence of Britain. However, pressed by the
pangs of hunger, the Britons grew bolder and even achieved some small
measure of success against their enemies. The impudent Hibernian robbers
returned to their homes; the Picts at their end of the island remained quiet
for a time, though both nations soon began again their plundering forays.
But with success came luxury, drunkenness, envy, quarrelsomeness,
falsehood, all the signs of a demoralised people. And then for the
punishment of the nation came first a pestilence so terrible that the living
scarcely sufficed to bury the dead, and then, direst plague of all, the fatal
resolution to call in foreign aid.
“A rumour was spread that their inveterate enemies were moving for
their utter extermination. A council was called to consider the best means of
repelling their fatal and oft-repeated invasions and ravages. Then all the
33
councillors, together with the proud tyrant, with blinded souls, devised
this defence (say rather ruin) for their country, that those most ferocious and
ill-famed Saxons—a race hateful to God and man—should be invited into
the island (as one might ‘invite’ a wolf into the sheepfold) in order to beat
back the northern natives. Never was a step taken more ruinous or more
bitter than this. Oh, the depth of these men’s blindness! Oh, the desperate
and foolish dulness of their minds! ‘Foolish are the princes of Zoan, giving
34
unto Pharaoh senseless counsel.’ Then that horde of cubs burst forth from
the den of their mother, the lioness, in three cyuls (keels), as their language
calls them, or as we should say, ‘long-ships’. They relied on favourable
omens and on a certain prophecy which had been made to them, in which it
was predicted that for 300 years they should occupy the land towards which
their prows were pointed, and for half of that time they should lay it waste
by frequent ravages. Thus, at the bidding of that unlucky tyrant did they
first fix their terrible claws into the eastern part of the island, pretending
that they were going to fight for the deliverance of the country, but in truth
intending to capture it for themselves. Then the aforesaid mother-lioness,
learning how the first brood had prospered, sent another and more
numerous array of her cubs, who, borne hither in barks, joined themselves
to these treacherous allies.”
Space fails us to repeat in his own words the whole of the author’s
pitiful story. Somewhat condensed it amounts to this: The strangers claimed
that liberal rations should be given them in consideration of the great
dangers which they ran. The request was granted and “shut the dog’s
mouth” for a time. But soon they began to complain of the insufficiency of
these rations: they invented all sorts of grievances against their hosts, and
used these as a justification for breaking their covenant with the British
king, and roaming with ravage all over the island. “The flame kindled by
that sacrilegious band spread desolation over nearly all the land till at last
its red and savage tongue licked the coasts of the western sea.” The towns
[coloniæ] were levelled to the ground with battering rams; the farmers
[coloni], with the rulers of the Church, with the priests and people, were
laid low by the flashing swords of the barbarians or perished in the
devouring flames. Coping-stone and battlement, altars and columns,
fragments of corpses covered with clots of gore, were all piled together in
the middle of the ruined towns, as in a horrible wine-press. Burial there was
none, save under the ruins of the houses or in the maw of some beast of
prey or ravenous bird. Some of the miserable remnant who had escaped to
the mountains were caught there and slain in heaps. Others, pressed by
hunger, submitted and became slaves of the conquerors; others fled beyond
the sea. A very few who had fled to the mountains, there on the tops of
precipitous cliffs or in the depths of impenetrable forests succeeded in
dragging out a life, precarious truly and full of terrors, but still a life in their
fatherland.
At last the tide turned. Some of the invaders returned to their own
homes, and the unsubdued mountaineers saw the remnant of their
countrymen flocking to them from every quarter and beseeching them to
save them from extermination. A little band of patriots was thus formed,
under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man of modest temper but
of high descent, and in fact the only Roman sprung from the wearers of the
purple who had survived the storm of the invasion. Under this leader the
patriots dared to challenge the invaders to a pitched battle, which, by the
favour of the Lord, resulted in their victory. From that time the struggle
went on with varying fortune, now the citizens, now the enemy triumphing,
till the year of the siege of Mount Badon, which was also the year of the
birth of Gildas, and from which forty-four years had elapsed to the time of
his present writing. That was the last and greatest slaughter of “the
scoundrels”. From that time onwards external war had ceased, and for a
space the hearts of all men, delivered from despair and chastened by
adversity, turned to the Lord, and all men, whether kings or private persons,
whether bishops or simple ecclesiastics, kept their proper ranks and orders
in the state. Of late, however, on the decease of the men of that generation,
morals had again declined, anarchy had begun to prevail, and owing to the
frequent occurrence of civil wars, the cities were no longer inhabited as
securely as of old.
Gildas then proceeds to describe further the demoralisation of his
countrymen, and especially the outrageous vices of the five contemporary