Trinobantes, who inhabited the south-east parts of the island. The other Britons, under the command of Caractacus, still maintained an obstinate resistance; and the Romans made little progress against them, till Ostorius Scapula was sent over to command their armies. This

A. D.

50.

general advanced the Roman conquests over the Britons; pierced into the country of the Silures, a warlike nation, who inhabited the banks of the Severn; defeated Caractacus in a great battle; took him prisoner, and sent him to Rome, where his magnanimous behaviour procured him better treatment than the Romans usually bestowed on captive princes.

Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the spirit of the Britons was not subdued. In the reign of Nero, Suetonius Paulinus was invested with the command, and penetrated into the island of Mona, now Anglesey, the chief seat of the Druids. He drove the Britons off the field, burned the Druids in those fires which the priests had prepared for their captive enemies, and destroyed all the consecrated groves and altars. Having thus triumphed over the religion of the Britons, Suetonius expected that his future progress would be easy, in reducing the people to subjection. But the Britons, headed by Boadicea, queen of the Icena, who had been treated in the most ignominious manner by the Roman tribunes, attacked with success several settlements of their insulting conquerors. London, which was already a flourishing Roman colony, was reduced to ashes; and the Romans and all strangers, to the number of seventy thousand, were massacred by the exasperated natives. Their fate, however, was soon after avenged by Suetonius, in a bloody and decisive battle, in which eighty thousand Britons are said to have perished; and Boadicea, rather than submit to the victor, put an end to her life by poison.

86.

Julius Agricola, who governed Britain in the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, formed a regular A. D. plan for subduing this island, and rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. He carried his victorious arms northwards; defeated the Britons in 'every encounter; pierced the forests and mountains of Caledonia; and reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island. Having fixed a chain of forts between the friths of Clyde and Forth, he secured

the Roman province from the incursions of its ferocious neighbours.

During these military enterprises, Agricola did not neglect the arts of peace. He introduced laws and arts

among the Britons; taught them to value the conveniences of life; reconciled them to the Roman language and manners; instructed them in letters and science; and endeavoured to render their chains easy. By this conduct, the inhabitants gradually acquiesced in the dominion of their masters.

To secure the Roman province from the irruptions of the Caledonians, Adrian built a rampart between the river Tyne and the frith of Solway: this was strengthened with new fortifications by Severus; and during the reigns of the other Roman emperors, such a profound tranquility prevailed in Britain, that little mention is made of the affairs of that island by any historian. The natives, disarmed, dispirited, and submissive, had lost even the idea of their former independence.

But the Roman empire, which had diffused slavery and oppression, together with a knowledge of the arts, over a considerable part of the globe, approached its dissolution. Italy, and the centre of the empire, removed, during so many ages, from all concern in the wars, had entirely lost its military spirit, and were peopled by an enervated race, equally ready to submit to a foreign yoke, or to the tyranny of their own rulers. The northern barbarians assailed all the frontiers of the Roman empire. Instead of arming the people in their own defence, the emperors recalled all the distant legions, in whom alone they could repose confidence. Britain being a remote province, and not much valued by the Romans, the legions that defended it were employed in the protection of Italy and Gaul; and that island, secured by the sea against the inroads of the greater tribes of barbarians, found enemies on its frontiers, ready to take advantage of its defenceless situation. The Picts, who were a tribe of the British race driven northwards by the arms of Agricola, and the Scots, who were supposed to have migrated from Ireland, pierced the rampart of Adrian, no longer defended by the Roman arms, and extended their ravages over the fairest part of the country. The Romans, reduced to extremities at home, and fatigued with distant expeditions, informed the Britons that they

must no longer look on them for succour; exhorted them to arm in their own defence; and urged them to protect by their valour their ancient independence. Accordingly, the Romans took a final adieu of Britain, after having been masters of the best portion of it nearly four centuries. The abject Britons of the south, unaccustomed to the perils of war and the cares of civil government, A. D. found themselves incapable of resisting the incur448 sions of their fierce and savage neighbours. The Picts and Scots now regarded the whole of Britain as their prey; and the ramparts of the northern wall proved only a weak defence against the attacks of those barbarians. The Britons in vain implored the assistance of the Romans, in an epistle to Etius the patrician, which was inscribed, "The Groans of the Britons." The tenor of the epistle was suitable to the superscription: "The barbarians," say they, on the one hand drive us into the sea, the sea, on the other, throws us back on the barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us, of perishing by the sword or by the waves." The Romans, however, at this time pressed by Attila, the most terrible enemy that ever assailed the empire, were unable to attend to the complaints of their allies. The Britons, reduced to despair, and attending only to the suggestions of their own fears, and to the counsels of Vortigern, the powerful prince of Dumnonium, rashly invited the protection of the Saxons. The Saxons had been for some time regarded as one

66

of the most warlike tribes of Germany, and had A. D. become the terror of the neigbhouring nations. 449. They had spread themselves from the northern

parts of Germany, and had taken possession of all the seacoast from the mouth of the Rhine to Jutland. Hengist and Horsa, two brothers, who were the reputed descendants of the god Woden, commanded the Saxons at this period. These leaders easily persuaded their countrymen to accept of the invitation of the Britons, and to embrace an enterprise in which they might display their valour and gratify their desire of plunder. They embarked their troops in three vessels, and transported to the shores of Britain sixteen hundred men, who landed in the isle of Thanet, and attacked with confidence and success the northern invaders.

Hengist and Horsa, perceiving, from their easy victory

over the Scots and Picts, with what facility they might subdue the Britons themselves, determined to fight and conquer for their own grandeur, and not for the defence of their allies. They sent intelligence to Saxony of the riches and fertility of Britain; and their representations procured for them a reinforcement of five thousand men. The Saxons formed an alliance with the Picts and Scots, whom they had been invited to resist, and proceeded to open hostility against the English, whom they had engaged to protect.

The Britons, roused to indignation against their treacherous allies, took up arms; and having deposed Vortigern, who had become odious for his vices, and for the bad success of his counsels, they put themselves under the command of his son Vortimer. They ventured to meet their perfidious enemies, and though generally defeated, one battle was distinguished by the death of Horsa, who left the sole command in the hands of his brother, Hengist. This active general, reinforced by his countrymen, still advanced to victory; and, being chiefly anxious to spread the terror of his arms, he spared neither age, sex, nor condition. Great numbers of Britons, to avoid his cruelty or avarice, deserted their native country, and passed over to the continent, where, in the province of Armorica, they were received by a people of the same language and manners, and gave to the country the name of Brittany.

The British writers say, that the love of Vortigern for Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, was one cause that facilitated the entrance of the Saxons into this island; and that Vortigern, who had been restored to the throne, accepted of a banquet from Hengist at Stonehenge, where three hundred of his nobility were treacherously slaughtered, and himself detained a captive. But these accounts are not sufficiently corroborated,

After the death of Vortimer, Ambrosius was invested with the supreme command over the Britons, and united them in their resistance to the Saxons. Hengist, however, maintained his ground in Britain. He invited into this island another tribe of Saxons, under the command of his brother Octa, and of Ebissa, the son of Octa, whom he settled in Northumberland; and he founded the kingdom of Kent, comprehending Kent, Middlesex, Essex, and part of Surry, which he bequeathed to his posterity.

The success of Hengist allured new swarms from the northern coasts of Germany. The southern Britons gradually receded before the invaders, into Cornwall and Wales; and Ella, a Saxon chief, founded the kingdom of South Saxony, comprising Sussex, and that portion of Surry which Hengist had not occupied.

The kingdom of the West Saxons, or of Wessex, was founded by Cerdic, and his son Kenric, in Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and the Isle of Wight; but it was not till after many a bloody conflict, that these adventurers enjoyed in peace the harvest of their toils. They were opposed by Arthur, prince of the Silures, whose heroic valour suspended the declining fate of his country, and whose name has been celebrated by Taliesin and the other British bards. The military achievements of this prince have been blended with fiction: but it appears from incontestible evidence, that both in personal and mental powers he excelled the generality of mankind.

Whilst the Saxons thus established themselves in the south, great numbers of their countrymen, under several leaders, landed on the east coast of Britain. In the year 575, Uffa assumed the title of king of the East Angles; in 585, Crida, that of Mercia; and, about the same time, Erkenwint, that of the East Saxons. This latter kingdom was dismembered from that of Kent, and comprehended Essex, Middlesex, and part of Hertfordshire; that of the East Angles, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk; Mercia was extended over all the middle countries, from the banks of the Severn to the frontiers of those two kingdoms.

Though the Saxons had been settled in Northumberland soon after the landing of Hengist, yet they met with so much opposition from the inhabitants, that none of their princes for a long time assumed the appellation of king. In 547, Ida, a Saxon prince, who boasted his descent from Woden, and who had brought other reinforcements from Germany, subdued all Northumberland, the bishopric of Durham, and some of the south-east counties of Scotland. About the same time, Ælla, another Saxon prince, having conquered Lancashire, and the greater part of Yorkshire, received the appellation of king of Deira. These two kingdoms were united in the person of Ethelfrid, grandson of Ida, who married Acca, the daughter of Ælla; and