THE BRITONS.] ENGLAND 205 Joutrast Tith 4her >ro- nnces
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ionpire. Jorth- rn Bri- lin no- er con- nered y Rome. but as a Roman duke. Such is the title which Vortigern bears in that one meagre yet authentic narrative of English conquest which we have from the hand of British Gildas. But, however they might cling to Roman shadows, the people whom the English found in this island were undoubtedly in every practical sense a British nation, a revived British nation. And the fact that the invaders had to deal with a nation, and not with mere provincials, had, beyond all doubt, a most important effect on the progress and the nature of their conquest. The land then in which the English conquerors settled, and the people whom they found in possession of that land, were thus in a wholly different condition from the lands in which the other Teutonic conquerors settled, and from the people whom they found in those lands. Here was one cause which gave the English conquest of Britain a wholly different character from the Teutonic conquest of any other of the western provinces of the empire. The difference may in truth be summed up in a word ; it was not a conquest of one of the provinces of the empire, but a conquest of a land which had once been a province of the empire. And if the condition of the land and people that were to be conquered was thus unlike that of any land and people elsewhere, the condition of those who were to be its con querors was at least as widely different from the condition of those who were the conquerors of any of the continental provinces. A large part of the difference lies in the difference between a continental and an insular land. When an island is conquered by new settlers, it can only be by settlers from beyond sea, and a settlement from beyond sea is likely to be in many tilings different from a settlement which is made by land. This is part of the difference, but it is far from all. Had the invaders of Britain been exactly the same kind of people as the invaders of Gaul or Spain, had the people of Britain been in exactly the same position as the people of Gaul or Spain, the mere fact that it was made by sea would doubtless have given the conquest of Britain a special character of its own. But the main difference lies deeper. A.B the people of Britain were in a widely different position from the people of Gaul and Spain, so the Teutonic con querors of Britain were in a position at least as different from the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul or Spain. The enemies by whom the inhabitants of the forsaken province were first attacked were indeed neither men of another race nor invaders from beyond sea. The immediate danger was from the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of the island which the Romans had never subdued. The boundary of the Roman province had often fluctuated, and the defence of the frontier had needed all the efforts of the legions and the further protection of artificial bulwarks. A line of forts, a massive dyke, a wall of stone strengthened by towers, had been raised at different times at two different points. The line of Hadrian marked the southern limit from Solway to the mouth of the Tyne. The line of Antoninus took in a larger territory as far as the firths of Clyde and Forth. Severus fell back to the line of Hadrian. Under Valentinian the victories of the elder Theodosius carried the recovered Roman land of Valentia beyond the line of Antoninus. In the last moments of Roman dominion the boundary again fell back; the defences of Hadrian and Severus were again strengthened, and took the form of that mighty wall on the ruins of which we still gaze with wonder. But amid all these changes there remained to the north of the Roman province an inde pendent territory, of greater or less extent, which the Roman confessed by his very defences that he was unable to subdue. That its inhabitants, like the inhabitants of the conquered part of the island, belonged to the Celtic race there can be no reasonable doubt ; but as to the exact degree of their kindred with the people of southern Britain many questions have been raised. On the whole it seems most likely that they belonged to the same branch of the Celtic race as the southern Britons, and that they differed from them chiefly as the unsubdued part of any race naturally differs "from the part which is brought into subjection. In the later days of the Roman power in Britain, these northern tribes, under the name of ThePicts Picts, appear as dangerous invaders of the Roman pro- and Scots, vince, invaders whose inroads were sometimes pushed even into its southern regions. Along with them we hear of the Scots, a name which as yet means only the people of Ireland. But about this time the Scottish name was carried into Britain by a settlement of Irish Scots on the north-western coast of the island, in the land known as Argyle. The Picts of Britain, the Scots of Ireland, appear as the first enemies whose attacks had to be endured by the forsaken inhabitants of the former Roman province. But it was not the Picts or the Scots by whom the conquest of southern Britain was to be made. A conquest at their hands could have had no other effect than bringing the island back more or less thoroughly into that of the state in which it had been before the Roman Conquest. Another fate was in store for the greatest of European islands. The conquest of southern Britain was to be made, but it was not to be made by any of the in habitants of Britain. That great event, one of the greatest in the history of Europe and of the world, was to be the work of Teutonic settlers from beyond the sea. The Teutonic settlement in Britain must, in the general General history of Europe, be looked on as part of the great move- character ment which drove so many of the Teutonic nations westward " f tlie . and southward. It was part, in short, of the general sett i e . wandering of the nations. But it had in many respects a ments in character of its own, which distinguishes it in a marked the em- way from the other western and southern settlements of the P u e> Teutonic conquerors. We have already seen that the con dition of Britain and its inhabitants in the fifth century was widely different from the condition of Gaul or Spain. The land had never been so thoroughly Romanized, and the Roman legions had been withdrawn by a voluntary act of the Roman government. Here we have one point of difference ; we have also seen that there is another point of difference in the mere fact that the invaders came by sea. But the difference in the position and character of the invaders themselves was more important still. The great mass of the Teutonic settlers who entered the empire by land had already acquired some tinge of Roman cultivation. They already knew something of the arts, the laws, and the religion of Rome ; they served in the Roman armies ; they received grants of land within the Roman dominions as the reward of their services. Their princes were proud to bear Roman titles of honour, military or civil. The conquest was in many cases veiled under some form of decent submission to the Roman power. The Teutonic chief, in truth a foreign invader, did not scorn to give his occupation a show of legality by accepting some kind of commission from the emperor. In short, in most of their continental conquests, the Teutons were to the Romans, if conquerors, yet also disciples. In most cases they had embraced Christianity before their final settlement on Roman ground. Where this was not the case, their conver sion speedily followed on their settlement. 1 Where they came as Christians, but as Arian Christians, they gradually conformed to the Roman standard of orthodoxy. Sooner or 1 The Vandals and the East-Goths came to an end at a comparatively early stage of their settlement, before they had assimilated with tho Romans. The more permanent settlers, the West-Goths in SpaLa and the Lombards in Italy, gradually became Catholic.
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