regarded as a member of a household, afterwards as a member of the commonwealth. Very noble birth or great services rendered by the father secure for lads the rank of a chief; these attach themselves to men of mature strength and of long approved valour. Nor are they ashamed at being seen among their followers. Even among the followers there are gradations of rank, dependent on the choice of the chief to whom they are attached. These followers vie keenly with each other as to who shall rank first with his chief, the chiefs as to who shall have the most numerous and the bravest followers. It is an honour as well as a source of strength to be thus always surrounded by a large body of picked youths; it is an ornament in peace and a defence in war. And not only in his own tribe but also in the neighbouring states it is the renown and glory of a chief to be distinguished for the number and valour of his followers, for such a man is courted by embassies, is honoured with presents, and the very prestige of his name often settles a

war.

A liquor for drinking is made out of barley or other grain, and fermented into a certain resemblance to wine. The dwellers on the river-bank1 also buy wine. Their food is of a simple kind, consisting of wild fruit, fresh game and curdled milk. They satisfy their hunger without elaborate preparation and without delicacies. In quenching their thirst they are not equally moderate. If you indulge their love of drinking by supplying them with as much as they desire, they will be overcome by their own vices as easily as by the arms of an enemy.

One and the same kind of spectacle is always exhibited at every gathering. Naked youths who practise the sport bound in the dance amid swords and lances that threaten their lives. Experience gives them skill, and skill again gives grace; profit or pay are out of the question; however reckless their pastime, its reward is the pleasure of the spectators. Strangely enough they make games of hazard a serious occupation even when sober, and so venturesome are they about gaining or losing, that, when every other resource has failed, on the last and final throw they stake the freedom of their own persons. The loser goes into voluntary slavery; though the younger and stronger, he suffers himself to be bound and sold. Such is their stubborn persistency in a bad practice; they themselves call it honour. Slaves of this kind the owners part with in the way of commerce, to relieve themselves also from the scandal of such a victory.

1 The Rhine is referred to.

5. THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH TO BRITAIN (Circ. 450).

Bede's Ecclesiastical History is the best, and often the sole, authority which exists for the early Saxon period of our history. Bede, a monk of Jarrow in Bernicia, is the flower of Northumbrian scholarship during the Dark Ages. Unlike Alcuin of York he remained at home, and his active life is little more than a record of the books he produced. In his later years he was celebrated throughout all parts of Christendom where studies lingered on or were reviving, for he wrote much and, according to the standards of his time, remarkably well. He died in 735. As a historian he certainly meant to be truthful, and if legend enters into his tale of the English conquest it is because he was not in a position to sift fact from fiction. Bede and the Saxon Chronicle1 both fix a precise date for the inroad which transformed Celtic Britain into Teutonic England. One would gather from them, and especially from Bede, that a campaign or two sufficed to work this change of masters. On the contrary the process covered a long period, and its details are obscure. After the weakness of the Western Empire under Honorius had compelled Rome to withdraw her forces, the country was left an easy prey. Its conquest was delayed less by British courage than by lack of union among the invaders. An instance of the romantic element which runs through Bede's version of these events is furnished by the names Hengist and Horsa. Both leaders must be handed over to myth together with their father Victgilsus, their grandfather Vecta and their great-grandfather Woden. The same

cannot be said of the narrative where it touches on atrocities and suffering. The misery of the vanquished would, in such a war, reach its extreme limit.

SOURCE.-Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

Chap. xv. Trans. J. A. Giles. London, 1847.

Baeda (673-735).

In the year of our Lord 449, Martian being made emperor with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the empire seven years. Then the nation of the Angles or Saxons,

1 The Chronicle at this point seems largely to follow Bede.

being invited by the aforesaid king,1 arrived in Britain with three 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 new comers 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. Those who came over were of the three most 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 Saxons, that is, the country which is now called Old Saxony, 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 MidlandAngles, 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. The two first commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa. whom Horsa, being afterwards slain in battle by the Britons, was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument bearing his name is still in existence. They were the sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden; from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their origin. 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

1 Vortigern,

Of

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; not unlike that which, being once lighted by the Chaldeans, consumed the walls and city of Jerusalem. 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 neighbouring 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 was there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly slaughtered. Some of the miserable remainder, being taken 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.

6. ST. AUGUSTINE, THE MISSIONARY1 (597).

Bede was born seventy-six years after Pope Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine to England, and with 597 his Ecclesiastical History approaches its greatest importance. The ScotoIrish Church was vigorously alive at this date, nor must it be forgotten that Christianity was the state religion of Roman Britain under Constantine and his successors. Thus, while St. Augustine was an apostle to the English, he was not the first who preached the gospel in the land. His success marks a triumph for the papacy in the same way that St. Boniface's conversion of the Germans does in the eighth century. During the Dark Ages one watches the progress of the church with double

1 This Augustine must not be confounded with the celebrated Bishop of Hippo, author of the Confessions and City of God, who died in 430,

interest. Wherever it spreads its peaceful and uplifting influence signs of material progress appear. Take the case of letters. Bede earned the title Venerabilis through his aims, his efforts, his example. And save for the refuge afforded by his cloister he could neither have served the cause of scholarship in his own age, nor have kept the memory of his people from destruction.

SOURCE.-Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Baeda (673-735). Chap. xxv. Trans. J. A. Giles. London, 1847.

Augustine, thus strengthened by the confirmation of the blessed Father Gregory,1 returned to the work of the word of God, with the servants of Christ, and arrived in Britain. The powerful Ethélbert was at that time king of Kent; he had extended his dominions as far as the great river Humber, by which the southern Saxons are divided from the northern. On the east of Kent is the large Isle of Thanet, containing, according to the English way of reckoning, 600 families, divided from the other land by the river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs over, and fordable only in two places, for both ends of it run into the sea. In this island landed the servant of our Lord, Augustine, and his companions being, as is reported, nearly forty men. They had, by order of the blessed Pope Gregory, taken interpreters of the nation of the Franks, and sending to Ethelbert, signified that they were come from Rome, and brought a joyful message which most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it everlasting joys in heaven, and a kingdom that would never end with the living and true God. The king having heard this, ordered them to stay in that island where they had landed, and that they should be furnished with all necessaries till he should consider what to do with them. For he had before heard of the Christian religion, having a Christian wife of the royal family of the Franks, called Bertha; whom he had received from her parents upon condition that she should be permitted to practise her religion with the Bishop Luidhard, who was sent with her to preserve her faith. Some days after, the king came into the island, and sitting in the open air, ordered Augustine and his companions to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution that they should not come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient superstition, if they practised any magical arts, they might impose

Pope Gregory I,