The city

wall

The hot baths

Its roofs are breaking and falling; its towers crumble
In ruin. Plundered those walls with grated doors
Their mortar white with frost. Its battered ramparts
Are shorn away and ruined, all undermined
By eating age. The mighty men that built it,
Departed hence, undone by death, are held
Fast in the earth's embrace. Tight is the clutch
Of the grave, while overhead of living men
A hundred generations pass away.

Long this red wall, now mossy gray, withstood,
While kingdom followed kingdom in the land,
Unshaken 'neath the storms of heaven

Its towering gate hath fallen. . .

yet now

Radiant the mead-halls in that city bright,
Yea, many were its baths. High rose its wealth
Of hornèd pinnacles, while loud within
Was heard the joyous revelry of men

Till mighty Fate came with her sudden change!
Wide-wasting was the battle where they fell.
Plague-laden days upon the city came ;

Death snatched away that mighty host of men.
There in the olden time full many a thane,
Shining with gold, all gloriously adorned,
Haughty in heart, rejoiced when hot with wine;
Upon him gleamed his armor, and he gazed
On gold and silver and all precious gems;
On riches and on wealth and treasured jewels,
A radiant city in a kingdom wide.

There stood the courts of stone. Hot within,
The stream flowed with its mighty surge. The wall
Surrounded all with its bright bosom; there
The baths stood, hot within its heart.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY SAXON ENGLAND, A.D. 400-830

I. THE ANGLO-SAXON SETTLEMENTS

The confused account of the British monk Gildas, which has already been quoted to illustrate the decay during the later Roman period, and which seems to have been written about A.D. 550, gives us, unsatisfactory as it is, our only nearly contemporary account of the permanent settlements of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Few details are recorded, and even these few are so complicated by the complaints and scolding of the writer and so inexact in statement that we get little impression from them except the mere fact of a permanent settlement of the German invaders in Britain.

the first

Then all the councilors, together with that proud tyrant 25. Gildas' Vortigern, the British king, were so blinded, that, as a protec- account of tion to their country, they sealed its doom by inviting in among conquests of them, like wolves into the sheepfold, the fierce and impious the Angles Saxons, a race hateful both to God and men, to repel the and Saxons invasions of the northern nations. Nothing was ever so pernicious to our country, nothing was ever so unlucky. What palpable darkness must have enveloped their minds darkness desperate and cruel! Those very people, whom, when absent, they dreaded more than death itself, were invited to reside, as one may say, under the selfsame roof. Foolish are the princes, as it is said of Thafneos giving counsel to unwise Pharaoh. A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in three keels, as they call them, that is, in three ships of war, with their sails wafted by the wind and with omens and

prophecies favorable, for it was foretold by a certain soothsayer among them that they should occupy the country to which they were sailing three hundred years, and half of that time, a hundred and fifty years, should plunder and despoil the same. They first landed on the eastern side of the island, by the invitation of the unlucky king, and there fixed their sharp talons, apparently to fight in favor of the island, but alas! more truly against it. Their motherland, finding her first brood thus successful, sends forth a larger company of her wolfish offspring, which, sailing over, join themselves to their bastard-born comrades. From that time the germ of iniquity and the root of contention planted their poison amongst us, as we deserved, and shot forth into leaves and branches. The barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island, to encounter, as they falsely said, any dangers in defense of their hospitable entertainers, obtain an allowance of provisions, which, for some time being plentifully bestowed, Settlements stopped their doglike mouths. Yet they complain that their of the "pro- monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they industriously aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more liberality is shown them, they will break the treaty and plunder the whole island. In a short time they follow up their threats with deeds. . . .

tectors" in Britain

After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try after his accustomed manner these his Israelites, whether they loved him or not, until the year of the siege of Bath-hill, when took place also the last almost, though not the least, slaughter of our cruel foes, which was (as I know) forty-four years and one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of my own nativity. And yet not even to this day are the cities of our country inhabited as before, but, being forsaken and overthrown, still lie desolate; our foreign wars having ceased, but our civil troubles still remaining.

Bede, who lived almost two hundred years after the time of Gildas, and cannot be considered as so nearly a contemporary witness, nevertheless gives in his Ecclesiastical

History of England a much more definite account of the settlements, and one which may be accepted perhaps as equally trustworthy in its main facts, though we do not know the source of his information.

the invasions

In the year of our Lord 449, Martian being made Emperor 26. Bede's with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the account of Empire seven years. Then the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, and conbeing invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three quests long ships, and had a place assigned them to reside in by the same king, in the eastern part of the island, that they might thus appear to be fighting for their country, whilst their real intentions were to enslave it. Accordingly they engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory; which being known at home in their own country, as also the fertility of the country, and the cowardice of the Britons, a more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up an invincible army. The newcomers received of the Britons a place to inhabit, upon condition that they should wage war against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the Britons agreed to furnish them with pay.

settlements

Those who came over were of the three powerful nations of Germany, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From The seven the Saxons, that is, the country which is now called Old Saxony, principal came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles, the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English...

Plunder of the Romano

Britons

In a short time swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so much that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them. Then, having on a sudden entered into league with the Picts, whom they had by this time repelled by the force of their arms, they began to turn their weapons against their confederates. At first they obliged them to furnish a greater quantity of provisions; and, seeking an occasion to quarrel, protested that, unless more plentiful supplies were brought them, they would break the confederacy and ravage all the island; nor were they backward in putting their threats in execution. In short, the fire kindled by the hands of these pagans proved God's just revenge for the crimes of the people.

For the barbarous conquerors acting here in the same manner, or rather the just Judge ordaining that they should so act, they plundered all the neighboring cities and country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea, without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword; nor were there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly slaughtered. Some of the miserable remainder, being captured in the mountains, were butchered in heaps. Others, spent with hunger, came forth and submitted themselves to the enemy for food, being destined to undergo perpetual servitude, if they were not killed even upon the spot. Some, with sorrowful hearts, fled beyond the seas. Others, continuing in their own country, led a miserable life among the woods, rocks, and mountains, with scarcely enough food to support life, and expecting every moment to be their last.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, though probably begun long after the time both of Gildas and Bede and copying largely from them, introduces many other details concerning the settlements in its entries under various years; as, for instance, the following: