THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 205

The Two Stages of the Conquest of Britain

13-11. The Two Stages of the Conquest of Britain

These considerations bring us to the much disputed question as to what became of the native population. The insignificance of the British element in the English language is scarcely explicable unless the invaders came over in very large numbers. On the other hand, many scholars have probably gone too far in supposing that the native population was entirely blotted out. British records say that they were massacred or enslaved. In later times, i.e. in the eleventh century, the number of slaves in England was not great, but it is not safe to infer that such was the case four or five centuries earlier. Indeed the little evidence that we have on this question suggests that in some districts at least they were a very numerous class. There can be little doubt at all events that the first invasions were essentially of a military character. Attempts have been made to trace in various quarters settlements of kindreds especially from the occurrence of place-names with the suffixes -ingas, "ingatun, etc , but the evidence is at best exceedingly ambiguous.

Among the Scandinavians who took part in the great invasion of 866 we can trace various grades of officials (eorlas, holdas, etc.) between whom the land appears to have been partitioned, and although we have no contemporary evidence of what took place in the Saxon invasion, there is a prima facie probability that a similar course was followed. To the present writer it seems incredible that so great an undertaking as the invasion of Britain should have been accomplished without the employment of large and organised forces. The earliest records we possess furnish abundant evidence for the existence of a very numerous military class of different grades, while the provincial government appears to have been vested in the hands of royal officials and not in popular bodies.

From archaeological evidence and from the character of local nomenclature we can to a certain extent determine the area occupied by the invaders at various periods, although very much remains to be done in these fields of investigation. Thus the practice of cremation is found in early cemeteries in the valley of the Trent and in various parts of the Thames valley as far west as Brighthampton in Oxfordshire, but there is scarcely any evidence for its employment further to the west. In local nomenclature again changes may be observed — thus the proportion of place-names ending in the suffix -ham to those ending in the suffix -ton decreases as we proceed from east to west. So far as the evidence is at present collected it would seem to indicate that the eastern and southeastern counties, together with the banks of the large rivers for some distance inland, shew an earlier type of Saxon nomenclature than the rest of the country. But it is highly probable that as in the case of the invasion of 866 a much larger area was ravaged by the invaders than was actually settled by them at first.

The account of the invasion given by Gildas, vague as it unfortunately is, points distinctly to the same conclusion. He speaks in the first place of a time when the country was harried far and wide, when the cities were spoiled, and the inhabitants slain or enslaved. Then came a time when the natives under Ambrosius Aurelianus began to offer a more effective resistance, from which time forward war continued with varying success until the siege of Mons Badonicus. From the time of that siege until the date when Gildas wrote, the Britons had had no serious trouble from the invaders, though faction was rife among themselves.

Unfortunately he supplies us with no means of dating the course of events with certainty except that apparently the period of comparative peace had lasted forty-four years. The Cambrian Annals date the siege of Mons Badonicus in 518, but they also date in 549 the death of Maelgwn king of Gwynedd who is mentioned by Gildas as alive. The majority of scholars accept the latter of these dates and reject the former, placing the date of the siege towards the end of the fifth century. The evidence of Gildas then on the whole leads us to conclude that the Conquest of Britain may be divided into two distinct periods The first occupied some fifty years from the beginning of the invasion, while the second can hardly have begun much before the middle of the sixth century.

Among the invaders themselves a number of separate kingdoms arose. It is commonly held that these kingdoms were the outcome of separate invasions, but no evidence is forthcoming in favour of such a view, and it seems at least as likely that several of them arose out of subsequent divisions, as was the case after the Scandinavian invasion in the ninth century. The kingdoms which we find actually existing in our earliest historical records are ten in number: (1) Kent, (2) Sussex, (3) Essex, (4) Wessex, (5) East Anglia, (6) Mercia, (7) Hwicce, (8) Deira, (9) Bernicia, (10) Isle of Wight. There are traces also of a kingdom in the district between Mercia, Middle Anglia, East Anglia, and Essex — perhaps Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire — while from Lindsey we have what appears to be the genealogy of a royal family. There is no clear evidence that Middlesex and Surrey were separate kingdoms at any time, though (if certain disputed charters are genuine) the latter was under a ruler who styled himself subregidus in the latter part of the seventh century. The balance of probability is in favour of the view that both these provinces originally formed part of Essex.

We have already mentioned that little value is to be attached to the dates given for the foundation and early progress of the kingdom of Wessex. They are apparently quite incompatible with the testimony of Gildas. Moreover that part of the story which relates to the Isle of Wight is difficult to reconcile with Bede's account, since it altogether ignores the existence of Jutish settlements in this quarter. According to Bede the Isle of Wight retained a dynasty of its own until the time of Ceadwalla (685-688), by whom it was mercilessly ravaged. The Chronicle states, as we have seen, that the island was given by Cerdic to his nephews Stuf and Wihtgar and barely mentions the devastations of Caedwalla. Further, according to Bede, the greater part of the coast of Hampshire was occupied by Jutes. These likewise are ignored by the Chronicle, which seems to imply that the West Saxon invasion started from this quarter.

In view of these difficulties some scholars have been inclined to suspect that the annals dealing with the early part of the West Saxon invasion are entirely of a fictitious character, and that the West Saxon invaders really spread from a different quarter, perhaps the valley of the Thames, and at a later date than that assigned by the Chronicle. It is to be hoped that in the future archaeological research may throw light on this difficult question.

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