85

PERIOD THE SECOND.

FROM THE INVASION OF THE SAXONS TO THE END OF THE HEPTARCHY, 449.

THE degraded Britons, restored to liberty, now considered it rather as a burthen than as an advantage, and did not follow the prudent counsel given them by the Romans, of arming themselves for their own defence. The Scots and Picts, finding no opposition to their inroads into Britain, renewed them daily, carrying devastation and ruin along with them. In the mean time the disciples of Pelagius, who was himself a native of Britain, having increased to a great multitude, gave alarm to the clergy, who were more intent on suppressing them than on opposing the public enemy. These calamitous circumstances determined the Britons to follow the counsels of Vortigern, one of their princes, who, though stained with every vice, possessed the chief authority among them, and advised them to send a deputation to the Saxons, to invite them over to their protection and assistance.

The warlike and ambitious Saxons, who, from their fierceness and valour, had become the terror of neighbouring nations, considered it as a fortunate circumstance to be invited into a country, which had been long before the object of their ambitious designs. They accordingly sent to Britain 1600 men, under the command of two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, who landed in the isle of Thanet, where they were received with great joy by the dispirited Britons, who made them the most ample promises of all necessary provisions and suitable rewards for their assistance. These preliminaries being settled,

the Saxons, as soon as they were joined by some British forces, boldly marched against the Picts and Scots, attacked them near Stamford, and gained a complete victory.

The Saxon generals perceiving, from their easy success in that battle, with what facility they might subdue the Britons themselves, who had not been able to resist those feeble invaders, sent intelligence to Saxony of the fertility and richness of Britain, and represented as certain the conquest of a nation so long disused to arms. In the mean time, Hengist induced the Britons to consent to a proposal he made, of sending for a reinforcement of his countrymen, as a further security against all future attempts of the Scots and Picts. This reinforcement, consisting of 5000 men, came over and joined the army of the Saxon chieftains. As soon as they saw themselves at the head of these determined warriors, they began to create a quarrel, by complaining, with as much bitterness as insincerity, that their subsidies were ill paid, and their provisions withdrawn; but they soon took off the mask, and having formed an alliance with the Picts and Scots, they proceeded to open hostility against the Britons. Roused to indignation against their treacherous auxiliaries, and impelled by the urgency of their calamities, the Britons at length took up arms, and having deposed Vortigern, who had become odious from the result of his rash counsels, they put themselves under the command of his son Vortimer. They fought many battles; and though the victories be disputed between the British and Saxon an. nalists, the progress still made by the Saxons prove that the advantage was commonly on their side. In one of these battles, however, fought at Eglesford, now Alisford, the prince Horsa was slain, and left the whole command of his countrymen to his brother Hengist, who carried devastation into the most remote corners of Britain, and reduced to ashes its

private and public edifices. The priests were slaughtered on the altars by these idolatrous invaders; the bishops and nobility shared the fate of the vulgar; the people, flying to the mountains and deserts, were intercepted and butchered in heaps: some were glad to accept of life and servitude under their victors; others took shelter on the opposite shore, in the part called Armorica, where being charitably received by a people of their same language and manners, they settled in great numbers, and gave the country the name of Britanny.

After the death of Vortimer, Ambrosius, a Briton, though of Roman descent, was invested with the command over his countrymen, and succeeded in some measure in uniting them against the Saxons. These contests increased the animosity between the two nations, and revived the military spirit of the ancient inhabitants. Still, however, Hengist maintained his ground; and in order to strengthen the Saxon interest in Britain, he called over a new tribe of Saxons under the command of his brother Octa, and Ebissa the son of Octa, and settled them in Northumberland. He himself remained in the southern parts of the island, and laid the foundation of the kingdom of Kent, comprehending the county of that name, Middlesex, Essex, and part of Surry. He fixed his royal seat at Canterbury, where he governed about forty years, and left his new acquired dominions to his posterity.

The success of Hengist encouraged other Saxon chiefs to come over and attempt to settle themselves in Britain. One of these, named Ælla, arrived in 477, with his three sons, at the head of many warlike followers, and laid the foundation of the kingdom of the south Saxons, or Sussex, which included Surry, Sussex, the New Forest, and extended to the frontiers of Kent.

Another tribe of Saxons, under the command of Cerdic and his son Kenric, landed in the west, in the

year 495, and from thence were called the West Saxons. They met a vigorous resistance from the natives; but being reinforced from Germany, and assisted by their countrymen already established in the island, they routed the Britons; and though retarded in their progress by the armies opposed to them, they kept possession of their conquests; and succeeded in establishing the third Saxon kingdom, known under the name of Wessex or West Saxons, and including the counties of Hants, Dorset, Wilts, Berks, and the isle of Wight.

It was against these invaders that the famous Prince Arthur, king or chief of the Silures, acquired his brilliant renown. However unsuccessful all his valour might have been in the end, yet his name makes too conspicuous a figure in the fabulous annals or romances of the times, not to take some notice of him.

Nothing is more uncertain than the real origin of this Arthur, so much celebrated in the Songs of Thalespin and many other British bards. His military atchievements have been blended with so many fables, as even to give occasion to doubt of his existence. Certain it is, however, that he was a commander of great valour. According to the most authentic traditions of the times, he worsted the Saxons in twelve successive battles; it is even asserted, that in one of these, fought at Caerbaden in Berks, he killed no less than 440 of the enemy with his own hand. But the Saxon armies were too powerful to be destroyed by the desultory efforts of single valour so that they still gained ground; and the gallant Arthur, in the decline of life, had the mortification, from some domestic troubles of his own, to be a patient spectator of their encroachments. His first wife had been carried off by Melnas, king of Somersetshire, who detained her a whole year at Glastenbury; until Arthur, discovering the place of her retreat, advanced with his army

against the ravisher, and obliged him to give her back, through the mediation of Gildas Albanius. Not mention is made of his second wife; but his third was debauched by his own nephew, Mordred. This produced a rebellion, in which Arthur and Mordred meeting in battle, they slew each other.

Cerdic, the first king of Wessex, died in 534; and Kenric, his son, in 560; the crown passed to their posterity.

While the Saxons made this progress in the west, their countrymen were no less active in other parts of the island. In the year 527, a great tribe of these adventurers, under several leaders, landed on the east coast of Britain. The names and actions of those chieftains have not been preserved in history; it is only known, that after many battles, they esta blished new kingdoms. Uffa assumed the title of king of the east Angles in 575; Crida, that of king of Mercia in 585; and Erkenwin, that of king of East Saxons, or Essex, about the same time. This latter kingdom was dismembered from that of Kent, and comprehended Essex, Middlesex, and part of Herefordshire; that of the East Angles, the coun. ties of Cambridge, Suffolk, and Norfolk. Mercia was extended over all the middle counties, from the banks of the Severn to the frontiers of the East Saxons and East Angles.

The seventh and last kingdom which the Saxons obtained, was that of Northumberland, where Hengist had settled his brother and his nephew, with the body of troops under their command. But as they made slow progress in subduing the inhabitants, none of these princes, for a long time, assumed the title of king. At last Ida, a Saxon prince of great valour, brought over a reinforcement from Germany, in 547, and enabled the Northumbrians to carry on their conquests against the Britons. He entirely subdued the country now called Northumberland, the bishopric of Durham, and some of the