When, however, we pass to the three centuries and a half of Roman rule, we can hardly help coming to the conclusion that it was during that period that England became an agricultural country; nor is it easy to avoid the further conclusion that the agricultural system then established remained during and after the barbarian invasions. Take first the evidence for the extension of agriculture. Some thirty years after Claudius first set about the conquest of Britain, and but seventeen years after the suppression of the rebellion of the southern tribes led by Boadicea, Agricola became proconsul of Britain. Now, it appears from the account given by his biographer, Tacitus, that even as early as this the Roman tribute was collected in the form of corn. But we may gather that the cultivation of corn was only gradually spreading over the country; for we are told that Agricola had to interfere to prevent extortionate practices on the part of the revenue officers, who were in the habit of forcing the provincials to buy corn at an exorbitant rate from the Government granaries, in order to make up the prescribed quantity.[20] We may conjecture that the extension of agriculture was itself largely owing to the pressure of the Roman administration. But to whatever it may have been due, before the Roman rule had come to an end Britain had become celebrated for its production of corn. On one occasion, A.D. 360, the Emperor Julian had as many as eight hundred vessels built to carry corn from Britain to the starving cities on the Rhine. But by whom was the corn grown? We can hardly doubt that it was raised in Britain, as in other Roman provinces, on great private estates, surrounding the villas of wealthy landowners, and cultivated by dependants of various grades—coloni, freedmen, slaves. Remains of Roman villas are scattered all over the southern counties of England,[21] far too closely adjacent one to another to allow us to think of the life of Britain as “mainly military,” or to look upon Britain as “a Roman Algeria.”[22] It would be absurd to suppose that these villas were all the residences of wealthy officers or of provincials who derived their income from official emoluments. We should be justified, even if we had no direct information, in supposing that the villa meant in Britain very much what it meant in Gaul and elsewhere; but, as it chances, a decree of Constantine of the year 319 does actually mention coloni and tributarii as present in England;[23] and both these terms indicate classes which, whether technically free or not, were none the less dependent on a lord and bound to the soil. And we can readily see how such a class would grow up. Some of the coloni may, as in Italy, have originally been free leaseholders, who had fallen into arrears in the payment of their rent. But there is no necessity for such a supposition. Among the Gauls, as Cæsar tells us, the only classes held in honour were the druids and the knights (equites). “The people” (plebes), he says, “are regarded in much the same light as slaves, without any initiative or voice in public affairs; and many of them are forced by debt, or the pressure of taxation, or even by violence, actually to become the slaves of the more powerful.”[24] In all probability the Romans found “knights” and “people” in the same relative position in Britain; and, indeed, when the unconquered tribes of Ireland and Wales come within the ken of history we find among them a large class of servile cultivators below the free tribesmen.[25] Whatever may have happened to the “knights,” the “people” would easily become serfs bound to the soil on the various villas. Then, again, it must be noticed that it was the constant policy of the Roman emperors to provide for the needs both of agriculture and of military service by transporting conquered barbarians to distant provinces, and settling them on vacant or uncultivated lands. M. Fustel de Coulanges in his Recherches[26] shows that these barbarians were by no means turned into peasant proprietors; they became tenants, bound to the soil, upon the imperial domains or the estates of great proprietors. Britain enjoyed its share of the fruits of this policy; for in the later part of the second century Antoninus sent to Britain a number of Marcomanni; a century later, Probus transported hither a number of Burgundians and Vandals; and Valentinian, still a century later, sent a tribe of the Alamanni.[27] There is, therefore, no difficulty in accounting for the growth of a population of prædial serfs during the period of Roman rule.
If, however, we suppose that Southern Britain was divided during the period of Roman rule into estates cultivated by dependent tenants and slaves, there is much that would lead us to believe that the Roman agricultural system was retained by the English conquerors; even though, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot directly prove continuity. The first and most important consideration is this: the English manorial system was substantially, and, indeed, in most of its details, similar to that which prevailed during the Middle Ages in Northern France and Western Germany. But these Continental conditions—it has, I think, conclusively been proved—were the direct continuation of conditions that had prevailed under Roman rule.[28] The natural conclusion is that what is true of the Continent is true also of England. This conviction is confirmed by looking at two of the fundamental characteristics of the English manor. The distinction between land in villenage and land in demesne—the latter cultivated by the tenants of the former, but yet kept in the lord’s hands—is to be found in the mediæval manor, and in the Roman villa.[29] It is not to be found either in the tribal system of Wales,—which we may look upon as indicating the condition to which the Celtic inhabitants of Britain might have arrived if left to themselves; nor in Tacitus’ account of the ancient Germans, which probably furnishes us in general outline with a picture of the social organisation which the English brought with them. Both in Wales and among the ancient Germans there were slaves working in their masters’ houses, or on their farms, and there were also servile tenants paying dues in kind; but in neither case was there an obligation on the part of a tenant to labour on any other land than his own holding.
Another feature of the English manor was the division of its arable lands into three fields, with a regular rotation of crops, and with one field out of the three always fallow. Occasionally only two fields are to be found, sometimes as many as four; but by far the most usual number was three.[30] Now it is a very significant fact that the three-field system has never been at all general in North-Western Germany, or in Jutland, the regions from which the English undoubtedly came; and it is for this reason that Professor Hanssen—who has given his whole life to the study of the agrarian history of Germany, and who is certainly not biassed by any antipathy to the mark theory—declares that the English cannot have brought the three-field system with them to Britain. Two hypotheses are tenable: either that it grew up in later centuries to meet the special needs of the country; or that it was found there when the English came. That this latter hypothesis is most probable would seem to be indicated by the fact that the region in Germany where it has been most widely prevalent is precisely that which was most Romanised, viz., the South West.[31] We need not follow Mr. Seebohm in his ingenious attempt to show how it grew up in Southern Germany; it is sufficient for our present purpose to point out that the fact, however it may be explained, strengthens the probability that Roman influence had a good deal to do, in Britain also, with the creation of the conditions which we find in after times.
There are, therefore, many reasons for maintaining the permanence in Britain of the villa organisation; and we have seen above that while there are no clear traces of the free community, there are traces of what is afterwards called the manor, within a couple of centuries after the English conquest. These two lines of argument converge toward the conclusion that the manorial system dates in the main from the period of Roman rule. But this conclusion does not absolutely determine the other question, which has been so warmly debated, as to the race to which we are to assign the mass of the later population. It is expedient to narrow our inquiry to the southern and midland shires of England; leaving out of consideration not only Wales, but also the south-western peninsula, in which there is undoubtedly a preponderance of Celtic blood, and those eastern and northern counties in which there was a considerable Danish settlement. When we have solved the main problem, it will be early enough to consider these lesser difficulties. Unfortunately, even on the main problem there is much to be done before we can venture on a positive answer; and there need be no haste to come to a decision. For the economic historian the question is one of subordinate importance. If he is allowed to take for his starting point, as the result of recent discussion, that English social history began with (1) the manor, (2) a population of dependent cultivators, it matters but little to him what may have been the origin of the population. The present position of the question may, however, be stated in some such way as this. We can hardly suppose a continuity in system unless a considerable number of the old cultivators were left to work it. The reasonableness of such a supposition has been obscured by its unfortunate association by certain writers with the wild idea that the whole fabric of Roman society and political machinery survived the English conquest. There is absolutely no good evidence for such a survival; and Mr. Freeman has justly pointed out[32] that, had it been the case, the subsequent history of Britain would have resembled that of Gaul, instead of forming a marked contrast to it. But the disappearance of the Roman political organisation, and the destruction on the battlefield of Roman or Romanised land-owners, is not inconsistent with the undisturbed residence upon the rural estates of the great body of actual labourers. The English had been far less touched by Roman civilisation than the Franks; they met with a resistance incomparably more determined than that offered by the Provincials to the barbarians in any other part of the empire; and they remained Pagan for more than a century after the invasion. These facts sufficiently explain the savagery which distinguished the English from the Frankish invasion. But however terrible the English may have been in their onslaught, it was obviously for their interest, while taking the place of the landlords, to avail themselves of the labour of the existing body of labourers. And if the Roman upper class was killed out in England and not in Gaul, this would furnish a fairly adequate explanation of the fact that in Gaul the language of the conquered is spoken, and in England that of the conquerors.
It is reassuring to find, on referring to Gibbon’s chapter on the English conquest of Britain, that this conclusion agrees with the judgment of one “whose lightest words are weighty.”[33] Gibbon dwells as strongly as anyone could wish on the thorough character of the English operations: “Conquest has never appeared more dreadful or destructive than in the hands of the Saxons.” He lays due stress on the fate of Andredes-Ceaster: “the last of the Britons, without distinction of age or sex, was massacred in the ruins of Anderida; and the repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under the Saxon heptarchy.” He asserts, with vigorous rhetoric, that a clean sweep was made of the Roman administrative organisation:
“The arts and religion, the laws and language, which the Romans had so carefully planted in Britain, were extirpated by their barbarous successors.... The kings of France maintained the privileges of their Roman subjects, but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws of Rome and of the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the titles of honour, the forms of office, the ranks of society ... were finally suppressed.... The example of a revolution, so rapid and so complete, may not easily be found.”
Nevertheless, he does not agree with those who hold that such a revolution involved either the “extirpation” or the “extermination” or even the “displacement” of the subject population.
“This strange alteration has persuaded historians, and even philosophers” (an amusing touch) “that the provincials of Britain were totally exterminated; and that the vacant land was again peopled by the perpetual influx and rapid increase of the German colonies.... But neither reason nor facts can justify the unnatural supposition that the Saxons of Britain remained alone in the desert which they had subdued. After the sanguinary barbarians had secured their dominion, and gratified their revenge, it was their interest to preserve the peasants as well as the cattle of the unresisting country. In each successive revolution the patient herd becomes the property of its new masters; and the salutary compact of food and labour is silently ratified by their mutual necessities.”[34]
A weightier argument than that of language has been based on the history of religion. Little importance, indeed, can be attached to the fact that in Gaul there was no break in the episcopate or in the diocesan system, while in England both needed to be re-established by Augustine and Theodore. For even if the diocesan system had existed in Britain before the English invasion—which is doubtful[35]—it would disappear with the destruction of the governing classes. It is a more important consideration that if Britain had been thoroughly Christianised, and if a large Christian population had continued to dwell in the country, we should surely have had some reference to these native Christians in the accounts we subsequently obtain of the conversion of the English. But we know very little of British Christianity; it might have been strong in the cities, and even among the gentry in the country, without having any real hold upon the rural population—the pagani as they were called elsewhere. Dr. Hatch, speaking of the condition of Gaul when the Teutonic invasions began, has told us that the mass of the Celtic peasantry was still unconverted.[36] And this is still more likely to be true of Britain. Even if nominally Christian, half-heathen serfs, left without churches or priests, would soon relapse into paganism; especially as it would be their interest to accept the religion of their conquerors. The exact force of the argument as to religion must be left as undetermined.
There is another source of information to which we might naturally turn, considering how much has been heard of it of late years. We might expect some assistance from “craniology:” the character of the skulls found in interments of the period of the English settlement ought to tell something as to the races to which they belonged. But although much attention has been given to pre-historic barrows, there has been comparatively little scientific examination of cemeteries of a later date. There are, at present, not enough ascertained facts to speak for themselves; and such facts as have been gathered have usually been interpreted in the light of some particular theory. When we find the late Professor Rolleston telling us that there are as many as five distinct types of skull belonging to inhabitants of Britain just before the English invasion, as well as two separate types of English skulls,[37] we see how wide a room there is for conjecture. Yet from his careful investigation of a Berkshire cemetery, which was probably characteristic of mid-England as a whole, there are two results on which we may venture to lay stress. One is that such evidence as it furnishes runs counter to the theory of intermarriage,[38] which has been so frequently resorted to in order to temper the severity of the pure Teutonic doctrine. This is intelligible enough. If the mass of the lower people were allowed to remain, while the place of the upper classes was taken by the English invaders, intermarriage would seldom take place. The other is that there are abundant relics, among the English graves, of a long-headed race, which can fairly be identified with the Iberian type as modified by increasing civilisation; and but scanty relics of the broad-headed Celt.[39] This fits in very readily with the supposition that under the Celtic, and therefore under the Roman rule, the cultivating class was largely composed of the pre-Celtic race; and allows us to believe that the agricultural population was but little disturbed.