minority of Honorius, obtained some advantages over them, which procured a short intermission of their hostilities. But as the Empire on the continent was now attacked on all sides, and staggered under the innumerable shocks which it received, that minister ventured to recall the Roman forces from Britain, in order to sustain those parts which he judged of more importance and in greater danger.

A. D. 411.

On the intelligence of this desertion, their barbarous enemies break in upon the Britons, and are no longer resisted. Their ancient protec tion withdrawn, the people became stupefied with terror and despair. They petition the emperor for succor in the most moving terms. The emperor, protesting his weakness, commits them to their own defence, absolves them from their allegiance, and confers on them a freedom which they have no longer the sense to value nor the virtue to defend. The princes whom after this desertion they raised and deposed with a stupid inconstancy were styled Emperors. So hard it is to change ideas to which men have been long accustomed, especially in government, that the Britons had no notion of a sovereign who was not to be emperor, nor of an emperor who was not to be master of the Western world. This single idea ruined Britain. Constantine, a native of this island, one of those shadows of imperial majesty, no sooner found himself established at home than, fatally for himself and his country, he turned his eyes towards the continent. Thither he carried the flower of the British youth, all who were any ways eminent for birth, for courage, for their skill in the military or mechanic arts; but his success was not equal to his hopes or his forces. The remains of his routed army

joined their countrymen in Armorica, and a baffled attempt upon the Empire a second time recruited Gaul and exhausted Britain.

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

A.D. 432.

When the Romans deserted this island, they left a country, with regard to the arts of war or government, in a manner barbarous, but destitute of that spirit or those advantages with which sometimes a state of barbarism is attended. They carried out of each province its proper and natural strength, and supplied it by that of some other, which had no connection with the country. The troops raised in Britain often served in Egypt; and those which

were employed for the protection of this island were sometimes from Batavia or Germany, sometimes from provinces far to the east. Whenever the strangers were withdrawn, as they were very easily, the province was left in the hands of men wholly unpractised in war. After a peaceable possession of more than three hundred years, the Britons derived but very few benefits from their subjection to the conquerors and civilizers of mankind. Neither does it appear that the Roman people were at any time extremely numerous in this island, or had spread themselves, their manners, or their language as extensively in Britain as they had done in the other parts of their Empire. The Welsh and the AngloSaxon languages retain much less of Latin than the French, the Spanish, or the Italian. The Romans subdued Britain at a later period, at a time when Italy herself was not sufficiently populous to supply so remote a province: she was rather supplied from her provinces. The military colonies, though in some respects they were admirably fitted for their purposes, had, however, one essential defect: the lands granted to the soldiers did not pass to their posterity; so that the Roman people must have multiplied poorly in this island, when their increase principally depended on a succession of superannuated soldiers. From this defect the colonies were continually falling to decay. They had also in many respects degenerated from their primitive institution.* We must add,

*Neque conjugiis suscipiendis neque alendis liberis sueti, orbas sine posteris domos relinquebant. Non enim, ut olim, universæ legiones deducebantur cum tribunis et centurionibus et suis cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam efficerent, sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis,

that in the decline of the Empire a great part of the troops in Britain were barbarians, Batavians or Germans. Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of its artisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the most wretched and forlorn.

quasi ex alio genere mortalium repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia. Tacit. Annal. XIV. 27.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

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

A

A. D. 447.

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

At length, after frequent elections and deposings, rather wearied out by their own inconstancy than fixed by the merit of their choice, they suffered Vortigern to reign over them. This leader had made some figure in the conduct of their wars and factions. But he was no sooner settled on the throne than he