Little boots it to tell of the savage and gory strife that raged in this island during the century and a half which followed. “Some of the Britons,” says an old chronicler, “were caught in the hills and slaughtered; others were worn out with hunger, and yielded to a life-long slavery. Some passed across the sea; others trusted their lives to the clefts of the mountains, to the forests, and to the rocks of the sea.” One hundred and fifty years after Hengist and Horsa landed on the Isle of Thanet the English ruled in this land from the North Sea to the Severn, and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth.
Britain had become England. No longer was it the land of the Britons but the land of the English. In the wild, rugged western part of the island the Britons alone remained independent. Gradually their land was shorn from them till only the hills and valleys of Wales were left to them. There they remain to this day, speaking the speech of Arthur, and singing the lays of those far-off ages when the whole fair land of Britain was theirs from sea to sea.
ETHELBERT AND BERTHA.
“Our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour; but no hammer in the Horologe of Time peals through the Universe when there is a change from Era to Era.”
Hand in hand a king and queen pass by, linked in wedded love and in undying fame. She is a sweet Frankish princess, with the light of tender affection in her eye, and the sweet serenity of an uplifting faith on her brow. He is a tall, bearded Saxon, with the martial air of one who has fought battles from his youth up; yet withal he is calm and reflective, equally at home on the battlefield, in the council chamber, and on the judgment seat. He is a pagan and she is a Christian; he bows before Odin, she before Christ.
Well-nigh a century and a half have gone since Hengist and Horsa sped their keels to these shores as the advance-guard of those great invasions which planted a new race on the soil. Generations of English men and women have come and gone since their sires with battle-axe and brand reft the land from its old inhabitants. No longer do the English war with the Britons, the remnant of whom dwell safely in the wild mountains and valleys of the west, or serve their new masters as slaves. They now war with each other. Ambitious kings strive to make themselves supreme in the land, and many a fierce fight is fought between the rivals. Now and then a powerful king reduces his fellow-kings to obedience, but frequently the conqueror of one month is the hunted fugitive of the next. Ethelbert, the king who now passes by with Bertha his wife, has made himself overlord of all the land except Northumbria. With this exception, his sceptre is supreme from the Forth to the English Channel.
Rome, once the proud and ruthless “mistress of the world,” has lost for ever her ancient sway. No longer does the wide world stand in awe of her. But on the ruins of her lost dominion a new, a merciful, and a blessed power is springing up. She has become the centre of the Christian religion, and ere long she stretches out her missionary arms to the isles of the west. St. Patrick is commissioned as the ambassador of God to convert the Scots in Ireland to the new faith. Devoted men in skin-clad boats of wicker-work cross the channel from the Emerald Isle to carry the good news to the natives of south-west Scotland. Amongst them is the great Columba of Donegal, prince in the eyes of his fellows, but in his own a meek bondsman of Christ. With his twelve companions he steers for the rising sun, and his barks run ashore on the little bare island of Iona, where he lands and builds his wattled church and the rude huts of his infant monastery. From this retreat, which has become one of the most sacred spots on earth, Columba’s friends go fearlessly through the land into the wildest glens and the remotest clachans, preaching the gospel, and slowly and surely winning the Picts and Scots to Christianity.