Let us confine our attention to that portion of the race which settled on our own shores.
The testimony of contemporaneous history assures us that about the middle of the fifth century, a considerable movement took place among the tribes that inhabited the western coasts of Germany and the islands of the Baltic sea. Pressed at home by the incursions of restless neighbours, and the urgency of increasing population, or yielding to the universal spirit of adventure, Angles, Saxons and Frisians crossed a little-known and dangerous ocean to seek new settlements in adjacent lands. Familiar as we are with daring deeds of maritime enterprise, who have seen our flag float over every sea, and flutter in every breeze that sweeps over the surface of the earth, we cannot contemplate without astonishment and admiration, these hardy sailors, swarming on every point, traversing every ocean, sweeping every æstuary and bay, and landing on every shore which promised plunder or a temporary rest from their fatigues. The wealth of Gaul had already attracted fearful visitations, and the spoils of Roman cultivation had been displayed before the wondering borderers of the Elbe and Eyder, the prize of past, and incentive to future activity. Britain, fertile and defenceless, abounding in the accumulations of a long career of peace, deserted by its ancient lords, unaccustomed to arms[[9]], and accustomed to the yoke, at once invited attack and held out the prospect of a rich reward: and it is certain that at that period, there took place some extensive migration of Germans to the shores of England[[10]]. The expeditions known to tradition as those of Hengest, Ælli, Cissa, Cerdic and Port, may therefore have some foundation in fact; and around this meagre nucleus of truth were grouped the legends which afterwards served to conceal the poverty and eke out the scanty stock of early history. But I do not think it at all probable that this was the earliest period at which the Germans formed settlements in England.
It is natural to believe that for many centuries a considerable and active intercourse had prevailed between the southern and eastern shores of this island, and the western districts of Gaul. The first landing of Julius Caesar was caused or justified by the assurance that his Gallic enemies recruited their armies and repaired their losses, by the aid of their British kinsmen and allies[[11]]; and the merchants of the coast, who found a market in Britain, reluctantly furnished him with the information upon which the plan of his invasion was founded[[12]]. When the fortune and the arms of Rome had prevailed over her ill-disciplined antagonists, and both continent and island were subject to the same all-embracing rule, it is highly probable that the ancient bonds were renewed, and that the most familiar intercourse continued to prevail. In the time of Strabo the products of the island, corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron, skins, slaves, and a large description of dog, were exported by the natives, no doubt principally to the neighbouring coasts, and their commerce with these was sufficient to justify the imposition of an export and import duty[[13]]. As early as the time of Nero, London, though not a colony, was remarkable as a mercantile station[[14]], and in all human probability was the great mart of the Gauls. There cannot be the least doubt that an active communication was maintained throughout by the Keltic nations on the different sides of the channel; and similarly, as German tribes gradually advanced along the lines of the Elbe, the Weser, the Maes and the Rhine, occupying the countries which lie upon the banks of those rivers, and between them and the sea, it is reasonable to suppose that some offsets of their great migrations reached the opposite shores of England[[15]]. As early as the second century, Chauci are mentioned among the inhabitants of the south-east of Ireland[[16]], and although we have only the name whereby to identify them with the great Saxon tribe, yet this deserves consideration when compared with the indisputably Keltic names of the surrounding races. The Coritavi, who occupied the present counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Nottingham and Derby, were Germans, according to the Welsh tradition itself[[17]], and the next following name Κατυευχλανοι, though not certainly German, bears a strong resemblance to many German formations[[18]].
Without, however, laying more stress upon these facts than they will fairly warrant, let us proceed to other considerations which render it probable that a large admixture of German tribes was found in England long previous to the middle of the fifth century. It appears to me that the presence of Roman emperors recruiting the forces with which the throne of the world was to be disputed, from among the hardiest populations of the continent, must not only have led to the settlement of Teutonic families in this island, but also to the maintenance, on their part, of a steady intercourse with their kinsmen who remained behind. The military colony, moreover, which claimed to be settled upon good arable land, formed the easiest and most advantageous mode of pensioning the emeriti; and many a successful Caesar may have felt that his own safety was better secured by portioning his German veterans in the fruitful valleys of England, than by settling them as doubtful garrisons in Lombardy or Campania.
The fertile fields which long before had merited the praises of the first Roman victor, must have offered attractions enough to induce wandering Saxons and Angles to desert the marshes and islands of the Elbe, and to call Frisian adventurers over from the sands and salt-pools of their home. If in the middle of the fifth century Saxons had established regular settlements at Bayeux[[19]]; if even before this time the country about Grannona bore the name of Littus Saxonicum[[20]], we may easily believe that at still earlier periods other Saxons had found over the intervening ocean a way less dangerous and tedious than a march through the territories of jealous or hostile neighbours, or even than a coasting voyage along barbarous shores defended by a yet more barbarous population. A north-east wind would, almost without effort of their own, have carried their ships from Hêlgoland and the islands of the Elbe, or from Silt and Romsey[[21]], to the Wash and the coast of Norfolk. There seems then every probability that bodies more or less numerous, of coast-Germans, perhaps actually of Saxons and Angles, had colonized the eastern shores of England long before the time generally assumed for their advent[[22]]. The very exigencies of military service had rendered this island familiar to the nations of the continent: Batavi, under their own national chieftains, had earned a share of the Roman glory, and why not of the Roman land, in Britain[[23]]? The policy of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, at the successful close of the Marcomannic war, had transplanted to Britain multitudes of Germans, to serve at once as instruments of Roman power and as hostages for their countrymen on the frontier of the empire[[24]]. The remnants of this once powerful confederation cannot but have left long and lasting traces of their settlement among us; nor can it be considered at all improbable that Carausius, when in the year 287, he raised the standard of revolt in Britain, calculated upon the assistance of the Germans in this country, as well as that of their allies and brethren on the continent[[25]]. Nineteen years later the death of Constantius delivered the dignity of Caesar to his son Constantine: he was solemnly elected to that dignity in Britain, and among his supporters was Crocus, or as some read Erocus, an Alamannic king who had accompanied his father from Germany[[26]]. Still later, under Valentinian, we find an auxiliary force of Alamanni serving with the Roman legions here.
By chronological steps we have now approached the period at which was compiled the celebrated document entitled ‘Notitia utriusque imperii’[[27]]. Even if we place this at the latest admissible date, it is still at least half a century earlier than the earliest date assigned to Hengest. Among the important officers of state mentioned therein as administering the affairs of this island, is the Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britannias; and his government, which extended from near the present site of Portsmouth to Wells in Norfolk[[28]], was supported by various civil and military establishments, dispersed along the whole sea-board. The term Littus Saxonicum has been explained to mean rather the coast visited by, or exposed to the ravages of, the Saxons, than the coast occupied by them: but against this loose system of philological and historical interpretation I beg emphatically to protest: it seems to have arisen merely from the uncritical spirit in which the Saxon and Welsh traditions have been adopted as ascertained facts, and from the impossibility of reconciling the account of Beda with the natural sense of the entry in the Notitia: but there seems no reason whatever for adopting an exceptional rendering in this case, and as the Littus Saxonicum on the mainland was that district in which members of the Saxon confederacy were settled, the Littus Saxonicum per Britannias unquestionably obtained its name from a similar circumstance[[29]].
Thus far the object of this rapid sketch has been to show the improbability of our earliest records being anything more than ill-understood and confused traditions, accepted without criticism by our first annalists, and to refute the opinion long entertained by our chroniclers, that the Germanic settlements in England really date from the middle of the fifth century. The results at which we have arrived are far from unimportant; indeed they seem to form the only possible basis upon which we can ground a consistent and intelligible account of the manner of the settlements themselves. And, be it remembered, that the evidence brought forward upon this point are the assertions of indifferent and impartial witnesses; statesmen, soldiers, men of letters and philosophers, who merely recorded events of which they had full means of becoming cognizant, with no object in general save that of stating facts appertaining to the history of their empire. Moreover, the accounts they give are probable in themselves and perfectly consistent with other well-ascertained facts of Roman history. Can the same praise be awarded to our own meagre national traditions, or to the fuller, detailed, but palpably uncritical assertions of our conquered neighbours? I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.
It strikes the enquirer at once with suspicion when he finds the tales supposed peculiar to his own race and to this island, shared by the Germanic populations of other lands, and with slight changes of locality, or trifling variations of detail, recorded as authentic parts of their history. The readiest belief in fortuitous resemblances and coincidences gives way before a number of instances whose agreement defies all the calculation of chances. Thus, when we find Hengest and Hors approaching the coasts of Kent in three keels, and Ælli effecting a landing in Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic tradition which carries a migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Gepidae, also in three vessels, to the mouths of the Vistula, certainly a spot where we do not readily look for that recurrence to a trinal calculation, which so peculiarly characterizes the modes of thought of the Cymri. The murder of the British chieftains by Hengest is told totidem verbis by Widukind and others, of the Oldsaxons in Thuringia[[30]]. Geoffry of Monmouth relates also how Hengest obtained from the Britons as much land as could be enclosed by an ox-hide; then, cutting the hide into thongs, enclosed a much larger space than the grantors intended, on which he erected Thong castle[[31]]—a tale too familiar to need illustration, and which runs throughout the mythus of many nations. Among the Oldsaxons the tradition is in reality the same, though recorded with a slight variety of detail. In their story, a lapful of earth is purchased at a dear rate from a Thuringian; the companions of the Saxon jeer him for his imprudent bargain; but he sows the purchased earth over a large space of ground, which he claims and, by the aid of his comrades, ultimately wrests from the Thuringians[[32]].
To the traditional history of the tribes peculiarly belong the genealogies of their kings, to which it will be necessary to refer hereafter in a mythological point of view. For the present it is enough that I call attention to the extraordinary tale of Offa, who occurs at an early stage of the Mercian table, among the progenitors of the Mercian kings. This story, as we find it in Matthew Paris’s detailed account[[33]], coincides in the minutest particulars with a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus of a Danish prince bearing the same name[[34]].
The form itself in which details, which profess to be authentic, have been preserved, ought to secure us from falling into error. They are romantic, not historical; and the romance has salient and characteristic points, not very reconcilable with the variety which marks the authentic records of fact. For example, the details of a long and doubtful struggle between the Saxons and the Britons are obviously based upon no solid foundation; the dates and the events are alike traditional,—the usual and melancholy consolation of the vanquished. In proportion as we desert the older and apply to later sources of information, do we meet with successful wars, triumphant British chieftains, vanquished Saxons, heroes endowed with supernatural powers and blessed with supernatural luck. Gildas, Nennius and Beda mention but a few contests, and even these of a doubtful and suspicious character; Geoffry of Monmouth and gossipers of his class, on the contrary, are full of wondrous incidents by flood and field, of details calculated to flatter the pride or console the sorrows of Keltic auditors: the successes which those who lived in or near the times described either pass over in modest silence or vaguely insinuate under sweeping generalities, are impudently related by this fabler and his copyists with every richness of narration. According to him the invaders are defeated in every part of the island, nay even expelled from it; army after army is destroyed, chieftain after chieftain slain; till he winds up his enormous tissue of fabrications with the defeat, the capture and execution of a hero whose very existence becomes problematical when tested by the severe principles of historical criticism, and who, according to the strict theory of our times, can hardly be otherwise than enrolled among the gods, through a godlike or half-godlike form[[35]].