but really of very high value-upon the attempt to work out each particular head of evidence fairly, and without suppression or distortion-that the conclusion must depend for its validity.

But in the attempt to balance evidence, to expose fallacies, to show that assertions sometimes pass current for facts, it may be hoped that the bounds of courtesy will not in any case be passed over; even those works from which the author of this essay has seen most reason to dissent-the conclusions of which he considers least in accordance with facts-have proved, in almost all instances, suggestive, and have assisted not a little in enabling him to obtain results of his own.

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CHAPTER I.

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE.

The Popular Belief, and its Historical Basis-Gildas's testimony, and its value-The earliest inhabitants of Britain, according to the Triads-Historical value of the Triads-Character of the population immediately before the Roman occupation-Character of the population when the Romans quitted Britain-First arrival of the Saxons-Probable effect of the Saxon ascendancyProbable effect of the Danish ascendancy-Probable effect of the Norman conquest-Probable changes in the character of the population after the Norman conquest.

THERE are probably few educated Englishmen living who have not in their infancy been taught that the English nation is a nation of almost pure Teutonic blood, that its political constitution, its social customs, its internal prosperity, the success of its arms, and the number of its colonies have all followed necessarily upon the arrival, in three vessels, of certain German warriors under the command of Hengist and Horsa. Hengist and Horsa are a necessary part of a child's education; so are Rowena, and Vortigern, and the Heptarchy, and many other pretty stories, which have found their way, under the disguise of facts, into respectable histories. The press even now seems generally to assume that

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the ordinary Englishman does not carry his historical criticism beyond the point which it reached in his childhood; and a Cambridge Professor* of History does not scruple to dilate upon the merits of our Teutonic race.' When a new discovery is made by a diligent search for facts, by a cautious or a brilliant generalisation, and by an ingenious series of experiments, the Teutonic intellect receives its meed of praise; when a war is satisfactorily concluded, it is Teutonic energy and perseverance which accomplish the feat; when a trading treaty is ratified between England and some effete eastern power, it is the commercial enterprise of the Teutonic race which triumphs over every obstacle. When Germany is in distress, we are invariably reminded that Germans are our kinsmen; when she does wrong, we are to judge her mercifully, because we have much in common with her, and have ere now sinned just as she has sinned.

It is hard to root out a prejudice, hardest of all when that prejudice has sprung out of statements made by historians of known ability, by historians whose sceptical turn of mind might almost be considered a guarantee that no worthless testimony could be accepted by them as trustworthy. A man, more than ordinarily well informed, might with reason appeal to Hume as an authority, might assume that the critic who distrusted the Gospels would not,

* Rev. Charles Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton, p. 1 and elsewhere.

without good cause, rely upon Gildas. The public must be guided by the historians who have consulted the original authorities, and cannot consult those authorities for itself; it must always follow a leader, and it is perhaps a matter of chance which leader it follows; the first comer is the first to be heard. And so, in this case, although Dr. Lappenberg, and Mr. Thorpe, and Mr. Kemble have already shown that Hume's history of Saxon England is not infallible, the Englishman is as firmly convinced as ever that he is beyond all doubt a Teuton.

But in entering upon an enquiry like the present, it is necessary-if possible-not only to root out our prejudices, but to come to the subject as nearly as may be in that state of mind in which we come to an entirely new study. It is difficult even for the most philosophical and the most conscientious to do this, to deal with a prejudice so that it shall neither leave the mind with a little of its former bias nor with a little of a new bias acquired by the reaction. But though the attainment of this frame of mind is hardly to be hoped for, an approximation to it may be not impossible.

In this case, perhaps, the safest way to deal with an old prejudice will be to examine it by itself. Let us then pass at once from the histories on which it is founded to those chroniclers who have handed down to us their version of the Saxon conquest. Of such chroniclers the name is Legion: the scope of their

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works is somewhat ambitious; they generally aim at nothing less than universal history, beginning with the creation and ending with their own era; but inasmuch as they almost invariably copy, and copy verbatim, from their predecessors, it is not very difficult to travel backwards to the truly original authority.

To use the words of Mr. Hardy, the materials for our history during the first five centuries (which may properly be called the British period) must be sought for, and are to be found, only in notices and incidental allusions in the works of the classical and Byzantine writers, in coins and monumental inscriptions, in the record of oral traditions, in the writings of Gildas and Nennius, and in the lives of the Saints. In the "Anglo-Saxon" period, history becomes more important, though it does not appear to have become a favourite study; at least, to judge from the few regular historical productions that have reached us : Beda, Athelweard, Asser, and the Saxon Chronicle are all that remain.'

It is hardly necessary to remark here that the value of any writer's testimony must depend principally on the period at which he lived. Those authors who have lived contemporaneously with any given events, stand in the first rank of credibility when writing of those events; those authors who have belonged to

* Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, by Thomas Duffus Hardy, Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls, preface, vol. i. p. xii.