[THE SAXON SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND]
With the settlement of the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes in England, this book has no immediate concern, but it is worthy of note that having driven the British people westward into Wales and south-westward into Cornwall, they quickly spread over the greater part of England. Their weapons, their costumes, their jewellery, and, indeed, their general standard of civilization, are clearly reflected and illustrated by the contents of numerous cemeteries, which have been scientifically explored and examined. We know little of their houses or other buildings until the eleventh century, when we are aided by the actual remains of churches, the evidence of illuminated manuscripts and the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.”
There is, however, one fact which stands out quite clearly in an age which is remarkable for the obscurity of its historical evidence. This is that the Saxons, as a general rule, did not immediately occupy the ruins of Romano-British towns or houses. On the contrary, they seem to have avoided them, even to the extent of diverting the roads which originally passed through the towns. This is so marked that we can only infer that it was due to a superstitious dread of sites which had once been inhabited by the Romans. The site of the important Romano-British town of Silchester, although full of evidences of Roman occupation, and of intercourse with contemporary British population, has furnished absolutely no trace of Saxon habitation.
What was true of cities and towns and houses, was probably true of the coast fortresses upon which the Romans, particularly in the latter part of their occupation of Britain, had expended so much time and labour.
It is extremely doubtful whether the Saxons ever garrisoned the coast fortresses abandoned when the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain. Numismatic evidence shows that there was an Anglo-Saxon mint at Lymne, the Portus Lemanus of the Romans, and possessing an important harbour. The coins minted there range from King Edgar’s time to that of Edward the Confessor, but there is reason to believe that the Roman site was deserted at an early period in the Saxon occupation, the neighbouring town of Hythe taking its place. Certain Saxon coins bearing the legend RIC, have been attributed to a mint at Richborough, but there is a good deal of doubt as to this identification. Coins of middle and late Saxon kings, as we might have expected, were minted at Canterbury, Rochester, Sandwich, and Dover, but generally speaking the evidence of Saxon coinage does not support the view that the purely coast fortresses of the Romans were ever used to any great extent by the Saxons.
The Saxons built burhs, or towns fortified with earthen ramparts, probably palisaded, in many parts of the kingdom, and the evidence for them will be found in the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” but they were not castle-builders. They were a people with tribal instincts and traditions. They did not construct defensive dwellings for a single lord and his family and retainers; they expended their efforts rather on fortified towns for the protection of all their people.
Wareham, in Dorset, is generally believed to be an example of the fortified towns of the Anglo-Saxons. Sandwich, again, which retains considerable traces of mediaeval earthern ramparts, and was a port of great consequence in early times, was also probably fortified by the Anglo-Saxons. It is impossible to say whether any part of its earthwork defences are of that early period. Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, Chichester, Colchester, and some other walled towns of Roman origin, appear, from archaeological evidence, to have had Anglo-Saxon populations, possibly of late date, when the Roman houses had disappeared and the dread of the Romans had become forgotten. It may be doubted whether the Saxons took advantage of the Roman walled defences.
As we have already pointed out, there are very few remains of purely defensive works belonging to the Anglo-Saxon period. For this reason the quadrangular moated site at Bayford, near Sittingbourne, in Kent, is of peculiar interest, because as Mr. Harold Sands, F.S.A.,[13] has pointed out, the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” mentions that King Alfred here threw up a “geweorc” in 893 in order to repel the inroads of the Danes under Bjorn-laernside, who had formed an encampment at a place called Milton, in Kemsley Downs on the opposite side of Milton Creek, a mile and a half north of Bayford Castle.
The incursions of the Danes and other raiders provided the Saxons with excellent opportunities for displaying their skill in defensive warfare, and brought into prominence a great man whose name must ever be held in honour as one of the bravest and most enlightened defenders of our shores. To King Alfred, commonly known in recent years as Alfred the Great, belongs the credit of having conceived the idea of destroying the enemy’s power at sea in order to secure the safety of our shores. He seems to have been the first man in our history to have grasped this great principle. He led this navy to action in person and so acquired the epithet of “the first English admiral.”